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”. 

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./.