BizCLIR

The perception among foreign investors, donors, and local professionals in Vietnam is that piracy and counterfeiting is pervasive in Vietnam. For example, as noted in the Office of U.S. Trade Representative’s 2006 Special 301 Report, USTR Watch List, “IPR infringement remains rampant” in Vietnam, with reports that “in some cities, 100 percent of the CDs, VDCs, and DVDs sold are pirated.” Similarly, several interviewees recounted multiple instances of trademarks being infringed, not only by private actors within the Vietnamese economy, but also by SOEs.

In response to international pressure to address and enforce IPR more effectively—most significantly as part of its implementation of the U.S.-Vietnam BTA and WTO accession process—Vietnam enacted a new Law on Intellectual Property in November 2005. Chapter 8 on provisional measures of the 2004 Civil Procedure Code was included in response to Vietnam’s U.S.-Vietnam BTA (and soon to be TRIPS) obligations.

Currently, Vietnam is on USTR’s “Watch List” of countries that do not provide adequate and effective protection of IPR (although, significantly, it is not among the 13 countries listed on the USTR’s “Priority Watch List” for 2006). An active and concerned international community continues to exhibit enormous interest in whether Vietnam will demonstrate a commitment to IPR beyond the enactment of statutes, and whether Vietnamese society itself will recognize its shared economic interest in curtailing the abuse of intellectual property.

For the purposes of this Report, IPR refers generally to the legal protection afforded industrial property and copyrights and related rights. Industrial property includes patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications, protected plant varieties, layout designs of integrated circuits, trade secrets, and protection against acts of unfair competition including unregistered but well-known marks. Copyrights include literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, newspapers, and computer programs; databases; films, musical compositions, and choreography; artistic works such as paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture; architecture; and advertisements, maps, and technical drawings. Rights related to copyright further include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.