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The National Privacy Commission issued Circular No. 2022-04 on 5 December 2022, which sets out the registration framework of Data Protection Officers and Data Processing Systems. Under the Circular, personal information controllers and personal information processors operating in the Philippines are required to register with the NPC as long as they meet any of the conditions for registration. The Circular took effect on 11 January 2023.

The Government of Indonesia issued Government Regulation in lieu of Law No. 2 of 2022 on Job Creation on 30 December 2022 (“Job Creation GRL”). This opens the second act of the Omnibus Law following the scrutiny by the Constitutional Court of the formalities in the creation of the original Job Creation Law which was issued in 2020. Content-wise, the 1,117-page Job Creation GRL is a non-identical twin sibling of the original Job Creation Law with substantive changes on halal certification, employment, taxation, and regional government as well as some non-substantive changes in other sectors such as water resources.

The newly amended Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women takes effect on 1 January 2023; Shanghai amends rules related to parental leave; the Supreme People’s Court issues a guiding case on how employers should handle sexual harassment in the workplace; an employee’s unsupported accusation of sexual harassment could constitute infringement of the right to reputation; the first equal opportunity case judgment in Guangdong Province is issued; and a Guangzhou court rules that a company’s internal disclosure of an employees’ information violates their privacy.

The soon-to-be enacted P2SK Law introduces “financing service businesses” as a new umbrella term for several categories of financing services, covering the businesses of finance companies (multifinance), venture capital companies, infrastructure financing companies, IT-based collective funding service providers (peer-to-peer lending platforms), and pawnbroker companies.

The Singapore Association of Pharmaceutical Industries Code of Conduct has been amended to include key principles when interacting with patients and patient organizations. The revisions are effective from 1 January 2023.
Article 11, which previously only expressly governed interactions between SAPI-represented pharmaceutical companies (Member Companies) and patient organizations, has been revised to include Member Companies’ interactions with patients. The amended Article 11.1 sets out the key principles to be adhered to when interacting with patients and patient organizations.

In the recent decision of Goh Ngak Eng v Public Prosecutor [2022] SGHC 254, the Singapore High Court declined to employ the existing sentencing framework for private sector corruption offences involving agents under section 6 of the PCA as set out in Takaaki Masui v. Public Prosecutor and another appeal and other matters [2021] 4 SLR 160.
Section 6 of the PCA criminalizes the actions of agents who corruptly receive or give gratification as an inducement or reward for performing or withholding performance in relation to their principal’s affairs or business.
In developing a new framework, the High Court cautioned that the sentencing exercise is not meant to be seen as a mathematical equation; sentencing frameworks are only meant to serve as guides and should not be used to produce a mathematically precise formula that identifies a precise point for the sentencing court to arrive at in each case.

On 2 November 2022, the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court published its decision on the trade secret infringement case of Wuwei Bosheng Seed Industry Limited Company (Appellant) v. Hebei Huasui Seed Industry Limited Company. This case raised the untested question of whether parent material used in breeding can be protected as a trade secret in China.