[Ip-health] Vietnam's IP Law question

[Manon Ress]

If you have the text (in English or French) of Article 125 of
Vietnam's new IP Law, can you send it to me?
Manon

quote:
Article 125 of Viet Nam=92s Law on Intellectual Property provides some
limitations on the rights of industrial property rights holders to
prevent other entities from using industrial property objects.
end of quote

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=3D01TAW090108
Talking Law

(09-01-2008)

Viet Nam =91TRIPS=92 on WTO=92s strict IP rights protection

by Tran Van Nam, Law Faculty, National Economics University

The WTO, through its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), obligates all of its
member states to protect intellectual property (IP) rights, requiring
them to build or revise domestic legislation to conform to standards
set forth in the TRIPS Agreement.

Viet Nam has complied through passage of its Civil Code in 2005 and
the Law on Intellectual Property. The latter governs copyright,
inventions, industrial designs, trademarks and trade names,
geographical indicators, business secrets and such specific areas as
integrated circuit designs and plant varieties. Where Viet Nam=92s legal
provisions on IP rights differ from IP provisions in treaties to which
Viet Nam is a contracting party, those treaties prevail.

Viet Nam joined the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial
Property in 1949 and has concluded and acceded to the Berne Convention
on copyright; the Geneva Convention on recorded works; the Brussels
Convention on satellite transmissions; the Madrid Agreement and
Protocol on international registration of marks; the Patent Co-
operation Treaty; and the Stockholm Convention Establishing the World
Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), as well as the TRIPS
Agreement.

With WTO accession, Viet Nam=92s IP commitments and obligations in the
TRIPS Agreement exert impacts on most of other bilateral and
multilateral commercial and trade relations between Viet Nam and its
partners.

Economic impacts

Meeting the requirements of the TRIPS Agreement is likely to create a
financial burden on countries with small budgets, including Viet Nam.
The most-developed countries are most likely to benefit from greater
protection of IP rights, while countries that need to import
technology will be economically burdened. Fairly high costs are likely
to be borne by developing countries, including licensing of IP such as
computer software.

The Business Software Alliance, a non-profit organisation operating in
80 countries, has gathered information on software copyright
infringements committed by Vietnamese enterprises and concluded that
software piracy exerted negative impacts on the development of the
domestic software industry, tax revenues and local job opportunities.
A 10-per-cent reduction in the piracy rate (from 92 per cent to 82 per
cent) by this year could help add US$1 billion to the country=92s
GDP,.create more than 4,000 jobs in hi-tech industries, generate an
additional $43 million in local tax revenues and bring $726 million in
additional revenue to domestic software companies, the alliance
concluded.

According to general forecasts of WIPO and the UN Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD), short-term impacts of the TRIPS Agreement=92s
high standards on developing countries, including Viet Nam, will be
adverse in that that strict IP rights protection is likely to limit
the access of Vietnamese society and consumers to many products and
services that are simply priced beyond their reach.

At present, almost all patents in Viet Nam are held by foreign
parties. During 1995-2003, Vietnamese invention registration
applications accounted for only 3.4 per cent of the total number of
patent applications filed in Viet Nam. This figure implies that most
new products and technologies patented in Viet Nam since 1995 were
created overseas or held by foreign parties. As a result, the use and
import in Viet Nam of such products and technologies have been
controlled by their foreign patent holders.

Most commercially valuable copyrighted materials (books, CDs and DVDs,
computer software) are also from foreign countries. Protecting such
products would result in more limited access to them at much higher
costs beyond what local users could reasonably afford.

Strict IP rights protections also put Vietnamese businesses and
investors in a complex and costly legal environment. Many Vietnamese
businesses are still not fully aware of the significance and operation
of IP rights protection. Complying is a burden on domestic businesses,
few of whom in turn benefit from IP regulations as they themselves
have registered few IP objects for protection.

Patent protection also makes investments to create new technologies
more risky, especially in circumstances in which research is slow to
bring about inventions or invention registration procedures are
carried out late, and all IP rights to research might be appropriated
by other entities that have obtained patents for similar products.
Stringent IP rights protection tends to favour large-sized enterprises
and large economies over small.

Let=92s examine the case of Viet Nam and the US: the number of
Vietnamese inventions and marks registered for protection in the US
remains negligible compared with that of US inventions and marks
registered for protection in Viet Nam. A similar situation can be seen
in the exchange of invention and mark registrations between Viet Nam
and regional countries. As a result, Vietnamese entities have few
opportunities to exploit IP rights in other countries whereas foreign
IP rights holders, with many more opportunities here, benefit from IP
rights protection in Viet Nam. Poor financial capacity and the small
size of Vietnamese businesses also hinder them, and high legal costs
conspire to prevent Vietnamese parties from pursuing legal actions to
protect IP rights against infringements in foreign countries.

What=92s your prescription?

Access to pharmaceuticals is crucial to many developing countries as
disease and other health problems greatly impede development and
public welfare. IP objects mentioned in the TRIPS Agreement related to
pharmaceuticals include inventions, marks and business secrets.

For developing and the least developed nations, essential medicines
are much needed for public health. Lack of these medicines is a major
problem for many developing countries and becomes more difficult when
they accede to the TRIPS Agreement. However, Article 125 of Viet Nam=92s
Law on Intellectual Property provides some limitations on the rights
of industrial property rights holders to prevent other entities from
using industrial property objects.

At present, though most inventions patented in Viet Nam come from
foreign countries, a few of them have been utilised in the country.
Protected products have therefore to be imported at high prices,
especially Western medicines and hi-tech products. Article 125 has
helped improve access to medicines patented in Viet Nam allows the
importation of medicines which cannot be domestically manufactured. =97
VNS



***************************************************************************
Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,

1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673