FAQs

Parallel imports (sometimes referred to as gray market goods) refer to branded goods that are imported into a market and sold there without the consent of the owner of the trademark in Vietnam. Parallel imports are generally allowed in Vietnam (Article 20 and Article 125.2 of the IP law). Vietnam’s legal provisions on parallel imports, meanwhile, can help ensure adequate access to Intellectual property protected imports. The regulation of parallel trade involves balancing the interests of local consumers and distributors, particularly with regard to pharmaceutical and agrichemical products.

However, as being a soon-to-be member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Vietnam will regulate the provisions to restrict the parallel imports in case without the owner’s consent.  

Industrial design is one of objects of industrial property rights which created or owned by them and rights to repression of unfair competition.

According to Law on Intellectual Property in Vietnam, an industrial design means a specific appearance of a product embodied by three-dimensional configurations, lines, colors, or a combination of these elements.

Incase an industrial design application in Vietnam does not meet formality requirements or any criteria for protection as to substance, there are two kinds of official notice respectively as follow:

(1) Notice of result of examination as to refusal: the notice of result will be issued by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam (NOIP). Accordingly, the design applicant is give time and chance to make correction, amendment for errors or submit their response to the Notice of result.

(2) Decision of refusal: In case the  design applicant does not take any action in response to the notice of refusal or the response is not persuasive, a Decision of refusal will be issued and any response to this decision will be regulated by Law on complaints in 2011.

In general, there are 3 main reasons for refusing an application of design in Vietnam regarding the drawing of the trademark:

• The unclear sets of drawing:

– The quality of the drawings:

For quality of drawings, the most popular failures are unclear and not sharp enough as well as jagged or blurred, so that the drawings could not exactly displayed the details of the design.

In order to prevent the mentioned refusals and wasting time and fees as well on amending drawings, the applicant of design should use drawings in technical design and avoid taking photos of the finished products, which the design is applied for. Normally, this caused light effects on drawings, for instance, shadow, opaque, unbalance light reflection, which impact on the quality of drawings. Preferably, all the figures should be best to be divided into separated files and saved in JPEG format.

– The ratio of the drawings

The drawings provided by the industrial design applicant, especially the drawings directly taken from the finished products, which design is applied for do not often have a same scale. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully check the ratio among figures before filing application of design in Vietnam.

– The address of design applicant in priority application (if any)

An application of design in Vietnam can take priority rights under international treaties, such as Paris Convention. To claim priority rights, the design applicant has to submit a certified copy of the first application. In some countries such as Japan, Korea; however, the first page of priority documents in Japanese/Korean and English does not indicate the address of design applicant. The National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam (NOIP) will be issued notice of formality refusal because the evidence is not sufficient to clearly verify applicant whom in priority documents and later Vietnam design application.

An industrial design in Vietnam shall be considered as to be novelty if it contains at least one substantial design feature which significantly differs from other industrial design that are already disclosed by way of use or description in writing or in any other forms inside or outside the country prior to the filing date or the priority date. The substantial design feature is basic shapes which can be easily identified, remembered and can be used to determine and distinguish this design with the others in the same classification.

Since there is no specific criteria to evaluate which can be seen as a substantial design feature, it mainly base on personal view of the examiner. Here are some general preference criteria, which are often used to assess the feature of industrial design in Vietnam:

– Industrial design is considered as a whole, not specific in details;
– Industrial design is evaluated on its formality, not the idea;
– Parts of the product which contain design will be mainly observed;
– Industrial design size’s change is generally not considered as substantial design features (except for significant change in size of two-dimensional design);
– The materials used to make industrial design are not considered as a substantial design feature.

The following solutions should be implemented by applicant to ensure the novelty of industrial design in Vietnam:

– Limit the number of people knowing about the industrial design in Vietnam as well as in the world;
– Do not reveal industrial design in public, except the cases which are regulated in Point 4, Article 65, IP law 2005;
– Emphasize the novelty through design description when filing the application of industrial design in Vietnam;
– Concentrate on designing the predominant parts.