The Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IPO) under the Ministry of Science and Technology celebrated its 40th anniversary with a ceremony in Hanoi on July 29.

IPO Director Dinh Huu Phi said the establishment of industrial property rights is one of the focal tasks of the office since its inception and becoming increasingly important because the surging number of applications for industrial property requires better handling of applications while trade disputes and complaints are also on the rise.

By the end of June, the IPO had received nearly 1 million applications for industrial property and granted nearly 600,000 certificates of industrial property protection of all types.

The official also highlighted his office’s efforts to promote task performance by improving governance, reforming administrative procedures, applying information technology, training personnel, and disseminating policies and laws on intellectual property (IP) through diverse formats, thereby meeting the growing demand for IP protection and development.

Pointing out tasks to the IPO for the time ahead, Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat asked the office to focus on proposing revisions to the documents guiding the enforcement of the law amending and supplementing some articles of the IP Law, encouraging creativity activities, facilitating the optimisation of IP, and pushing ahead with performing the National IP Strategy and the IP Development Programme by 2030./.