According to the law on Intellectual Property of Vietnam, any
third parties have the right to send opinion to the National Office of
Intellectual Property in Vietnam (NOIP) regarding industrial property right,
granting or not granting protection title to an application. When a third party
may give the opinion and how NOIP will handle that opinion?
Firstly, the third party has the right to send opinion from the
time of publishing the industrial publication on industrial Gazette till before
the date of issuing the decision on granting protection title. Accordingly, the
opinion must be in written form and attached the documents or sources of
information for evidences. The written opinion of
the third party is also a source of information for examining the industrial
application.
Secondly, after the opinion of the third party submitted into
NOIP, there would be the following cases:
-In case the opinion of the third party has legal grounds, NOIP
will notify of the opinion to the applicant and set a time limit for applicant
to reply to the written opinion. After receiving the response of the applicant,
if necessary, NOIP informs that response of the applicant to the third party
and set a time limit for third party to reply. After that time limit, NOIP
shall process opinion of the applicant and the third party according to the
evidence and arguments provided by the parties and documents included in the
application. The third party shall also be informed of the results of
substantive examination of corresponding application;
-In case the opinion of the third party is groundless, NOIP is not
required to notify the applicant of those opinions but shall notify the third
party of its refusal to consider the opinions, clearly stating the reason
thereof;
-In case the opinion of the third party are related to the
registration right, when finding it impossible to determine whether such
opinions are supported with legal ground or not, NOIP shall notify the third
party so that the latter can file a lawsuit to a competent court in accordance
with regulations of the Civil Procedure Code. Within 01 month from the date on
which the NOIP issues the notice, if the third party fails to send the NOIP the
copy of the notice of case acceptance of the court, it will be considered that
the third party has withdrawn the lawsuit and continue to process the
application without the third party’s opinions. If the NOIP receives such copy
within the abovementioned time limit, the NOIP shall suspend the application
processing until the results of dispute settlement by the court are obtained.
After the results of dispute settlement by the court are obtained, the
application processing shall be resumed in accordance with those results.
Besides, during the above processing, NOIP may organize a
face-to-face meeting between the third party and the applicant to further
clarify the opposition.
If the client needs help with handling such complaint, our intellectual property
attorney in Vietnam at ANT Lawyers
will be of help.
ANT Lawyers in a law firm in Vietnam, recognized by Legal500, IFLR1000. We are an
exclusive Vietnam member of Prea Legal, the global law firm network covering
more than 150 jurisdictions. The firm provides a range of legal services to
multinational and domestic clients.
