On March 31, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) coordinated with the Software Alliance (BSA) to organize the Launching ceremony of “Month to celebrate the World Intellectual Property Day for integration purposes”.
The panorama of the Launching ceremony
The launching ceremony had the participation of nearly 100 representatives from
members of the Action Coordinating Program on preventing and protecting against
intellectual property rights for the 2012-2015 period (in short called the
Program 168) including 9 Ministries, branches, international organizations,
business associations and mess media organizations.
Delivering an opening speech in the Launching ceremony, Deputy Minister of
Science and Technology Trần Việt Thanh emphasized objectives and meaning of the
Program to raise awareness on roles and meaning of intellectual property (IP)
rights for the society’s development; promoting the authentication,
exploitation, development and enforcement of IP rights; ensuring IP rights to
really become tools for promoting the scientific and technological development
in particular and the social and economic development in general; Creating
awareness of the whole society to fulfill international commitments on IP. The
month to celebrate the World Intellectual Property Date for integration
purposes (from March 31/3 to April 30, 2016) would be focused on dissemination,
advocacy and awareness raising on IP; investigation and checking the compliance
of legal regulations on IP would be continued to carry out and promote in
following months.
Sharing more in the Launching ceremony, Deputy Minister Trần Việt Thanh said
that in the coming time, in order to be in line with commitments in TPP, Viet
Nam would need to review, amend and add legal documents on IP, especially on
issues relating to patents, trademarks, geographical instructions, business
secrets, author rights and issues relating to enforcement of IP rights
(accordingly continuing handling violations of rights by administrative
sanctions and strengthening the right enforcement by civil, criminal measures,
protecting IP rights in the digital environment). With the requirements, Viet
Nam’s Government, together with the whole system of protection registration and
enforcement of IP rights have been improved and increased the efficiency of
protection and enforcement of IP rights in Viet Nam.
Delivering a speech, Mr. Trần Minh Dũng, MOST’s Chief Inspector, Head of the
Standing Committee of Program 168 said that according to initial statistics of
the Standing Committee of the Program 168 Stage 2 (2012-2015), enforcing forces
of IP rights nationwide has handled 26,004 cases with the total penalty of more
than VND 68 billion; confiscating, deadening by force, removing violating
factors with more than 70 tons of supplementary food of all types; several
thousands of wine bottles of all kinds; nearly 27,000 medical products; 80,900
tons of fertilizers and millions of electronics products, handbags, shoes,
fashionable clothes, wines, beers, refreshments and food which have has fake
trademarks and violate rights of industrial property subjects; several
thousands of CDs and VCDs without original stamps which have been imported
illegally.
Mr. Roland Chan, Senior Director in charge of the Compliance Program, Asia –
Pacific region of BSA said that “Viet Nam has entered TPP, the world’s biggest
free trade agreement. That means Viet Nam has been connecting more thorough
with nations in the world. This would bring big opportunities but Viet Nam
would be faced with very significant challenges of network security in the
connected world. I believe that the effective enforcement of software and
minimization of risky non-copyrighted software would contribute to support Viet
Nam to avoid attacks on network security which are more and more sophisticated
and threats for every nations, causing significant losses for economies and
societies.”
In addition, Mr. Roland Chan also emphasized that “We are experiencing a strong
participation of Government agencies in amending laws as well as speeding up
efficiency of IP enforcement activities in order to meet international
commitments on IP right protection. I believe that serious efforts of the
Government and enforcing agencies, Viet Nam would achieve significant progress
in IP right protection in the coming year, bringing opportunities for products
of Vietnamese enterprises to enter the world market as well as create a healthy
business environment for foreign investors”.
To conclude the Launching ceremony, Deputy Minister Trần Việt Thanh said that
to promote the Month to celebrate the World IP Day, many different dynamic
activities were organized, hopefully contributing to strongly promote IP right
protection and enforcement in Viet Nam, especially in the context that the
country has significantly changed to integrate into the regional and world
economies./.