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It takes an average of 12 to 15 months to register a trademark
in Vietnam. Many businesses feel that this length of time is too
long, but I would say that this process in Vietnam is relatively
quick and efficient. Vietnam has acceded to and therefore has to
comply with two important international IP agreements - the
Paris Convention on industrial property rights and the Madrid
Agreement on international registration of trademarks. These two
multilateral agreements require from 6 to 9 months to identify
conflicts between international applications and national
applications that request priority under the Convention, and
regular national applications. So in reality, the Vietnamese
authority only has 3 to 6 months to process the application. In
other countries, the United States, for example, the trademark
registration process takes from 12 to 18 months. If problems
arise, such as a conflict of rights with another entity, the
process may take two, even five years. However, we must
recognize that the limited capacity of the relevant Vietnamese
authorities do not yet meet the needs of businesses. The
government needs to invest more in the civil servants working on
trademark issues, as the NOIP is currently severely understaffed
and overworked.
Mr. Pham Vu Khanh
Toan, Attorney-at-Law, Pham & Associates
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The limited capacity
of relevant authorities is definitely a major problem with the
issue of trademark protection. It is very difficult to find
judges in the court system who are knowledgeable about IP issues
in general, not to mention trademarks in particular. Recently,
the Swiss government offered an opportunity for 10 Vietnamese
judges to be trained in IP issues in the United Kingdom. The
Court was unable to find 10 judges who met the criteria of
English proficiency and basic professional knowledge, and as
result, court secretaries were selected instead to receive
training. In other countries in the region, such as Thailand,
South Korea and Japan, there is a court that specializes in IP;
this model is one that Vietnam should consider, in order to
develop a cohort of judges with the necessary specialized
expertise in IP.
The NOIP is also limited in capacity. There are currently no
branch offices in cities, and there is a shortage of human
resources. Our competency, knowledge and experience is also
limited compared to other countries in the region like Thailand
and Singapore. Our operating budget is also limited—in other
countries, the equivalent office is considered a public services
agency and is allowed to retain almost all of the registration
fees collected (hundreds of millions, even billions of USD) to
invest in technology and staff, and to cover operating expenses.
In Vietnam, however, the fees collected from IP registration are
considered a source of income for the State, and the NOIP
retains a very small percentage for the office. The government
should consider allocating more resources to the NOIP.
Mr. Tran Viet Hung, Deputy Director General,
National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam, Ministry
of Science and Technology
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The NOIP examiners
and judges of the courts have received little or no relevant
training in IP relevant to the International Treaties that
Vietnam has acceded to, or to which it intends to accede. The
application of IP laws in Vietnam continues to diverge from
international practice that is considered consistent with the
WIPO treaties. The prime example of this is the practice of the
NOIP to consider two competing trademarks to be sufficiently
distinguishable and therefore able to co-exist if two letters in
a word mark are different. Given the current status of
enforcement in Vietnam, and all the matters referred to above,
Vietnam IP laws are in desperate need of reform. It seems,
however, that the government does not currently have any plan to
implement a new law on IP in the next 2 years.
Mr. Paul A. Norris,
International Lawyer, Baker & McKenzie
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