VIETNAM Law and Practice Contributed by: Thang Nguyen, Minh Nguyen and Nguyet Le, ACSV Legal
tracts, causing restrictions to market entry or expansion by other enterprises or elimination of other enterprises; • (f) preventing competitors from entering or expanding the market; or • (g) other acts abusing the dominant position as prescribed by other laws. An enterprise or a group of enterprises with a monopoly position is prohibited from perform - ing acts mentioned in (b) to (f) above and from imposing adverse conditions on consumers, taking advantage of the monopolistic position to unilaterally change or cancel an executed con - tract without legitimate reasons or performing other acts abusing the monopolistic position as prescribed by other laws. 7. Intellectual Property 7.1 Patents Generally, Vietnam allows protection for the fol - lowing subject matters of patent rights: • process or method; and • products. Vietnamese regulations distinguish two types of patents, namely: • utility solutions (petty patent); and • patent for invention. A patent in Vietnam can be filed in one of the three following ways. • Direct filing – a foreign patent applicant could file their patent in Vietnam directly. • PCT Patent – within 31 months from the first filing date to the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization or
from the priority date, the applicant must sub - mit the PCT application to Vietnam’s National Office of Intellectual Property (NOIP). • Paris Convention – within 12 months from the first filing date in a country which is a signatory of the Paris Convention Treaty, the applicant must submit the patent application to the NOIP. Vietnamese regulations stipulate that a patent shall be locally protected if it meets the following requirements: • novelty step; • inventive step (not applicable to utility solu - tion); and • industrial applicability. The validity for patents for utility solutions is ten years from the filing date. The validity for patents for inventions is 20 years from the filing date. In order to maintain the validity of a Vietnamese patent, the owner must pay the annuity fee annually, subsequent to the granting of the patent. Documentation required to file a Vietnamese patent: • specification of the patent – if it is a PCT patent, it could be downloaded from WIPO’s website; • claims of patent or amended claims, if any; • drawing (if any); • certified copy of priority document (if any); and • name and address of inventor and applicant. 7.2 Trade Marks Vietnam’s trade mark system protects visible signs and graphically representable sounds that
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