Since joining WTO, Vietnam has been coping to comply with the
international commitments in general and intellectual property area in
particular. In order to ensure fair legal environment and the benefits of intellectual property right holders, the Vietnam laws provide a
number of ways in which holders can apply the following methods to protect their intellectual property
rights in Vietnam:
Negotiation:
requesting organizations, individuals committing infringement acts of
intellectual property rights to terminate the infringing acts, apologize,
publicly rectify and compensate damages;
Using administrative remedies: requesting the competent agencies to handle infringement acts
of intellectual property rights;
Filing claim at court or arbitration center: initiating a lawsuit at a competent court or
an arbitrator to protect their legitimate rights and interests;
Negotiation is often used in the first step to request the
violator to stop the infringement of intellectual property rights. However,
this measure is not potentially effective because it dependents on goodwill and
cooperation of the violator as well as the legal basis, evidences that you can
provide to demonstrate and warn of violating acts.
Relating to the dispute settlements, due to high costs,
complicated procedures and extended time, this measure is not commonly selected
as the best treatment.
In Vietnam, intellectual property infringement is mainly dealt
with through administrative measures. Depending on their functions and
responsibility, competent state management agencies deal with infringements of
intellectual property rights as per request of the IP holders Currently,
through the following agencies:
Inspectorate of the Ministry of Science and Technology;
Economic Police of the Ministry of Public Security and;
Market management of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
In case of dealing with infringements of intellectual property rights in Vietnam, the holders should carry out the following
steps:
1.Submission of a written request to terminate an infringement
of intellectual property rights:
This step is optional to save costs for the infringed party as
well as deal with the infringement on the basis of goodwill and cooperation.
The infringed party should send documents, including a persuasive Cease and
Desist letter and evidences, to the violator for the purpose of requesting them
to terminate the violation and commit not to repeat the infringement in the
future. In fact, many intellectual property right holders have reached their
goals at this step providing that they can collect enough proof.
2.Requesting the competent state agencies to handle acts of
infringement of intellectual property rights:
In this step, the infringed party must prove both its ownership
to the intellectual property and information, evidence of the infringement by
the infringing party.
The application of administrative remedies is effective handled,
so it should be preferable to filling a lawsuit. After requesting the
administrative agency to penalize the infringing party, the right holder still
remain their right to initiate a lawsuit in court to claim of damages.
Actually, the combination of administrative measures and lawsuits at court
would be more effective for intellectual property right holders.
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