Cases concerning Phú Quốc fish sauce, Vinataba cigarettes or Buôn Ma Thuột cafe were good examples or just some companies who have fallen foul of foreign IP regulations. — Photo sohuutritue.net

HÀ NỘI — Experts are again issuing a warning to local enterprises to pay attention to intellectual property (IP) rights when doing business overseas. 

According to Lê Ninh Giang, director of the centre for IP technology and application (IPTA) said a lot of enterprises focused on forming businesses, calling for investment capital but not registering for any IP protection rights.

He said it comes as no surprise when he discovers cases where companies lost their IP assets in foreign countries when trading.

He said cases concerning Phú Quốc fish sauce, Vinataba cigarettes or Buôn Ma Thuột cafe were good examples of just some companies who have fallen foul of foreign IP regulations.

Giang said: “Many business owners still don’t know about IP registration and they are not yet aware of the importance of protecting IPs when exporting their products.

“While multinational enterprises in the world have invested a lot of resources in registering IP, few local enterprises understand the importance of the issue.”

He said in many cases, Vietnamese enterprises invested a lot in their brands in the country, making their products known by local consumers, but when they went to the international market, they became anonymous or already lost their brands which were being registered by another foreign company.

Vũ Thị Thuận, chairwoman of Traphaco said: “In the pharmaceutical industry, there are many creative values ​​that need to be protected. However, the current understanding of IP protection in Việt Nam is not yet sufficient, leading many businesses to potentially violate the law.

"For sustainable development and integration, local enterprises must firstly respect IP rights.”

In order to effectively implement commitments on IP with further integration to the international economy, lawyer Phạm Duy Khương, SB Law Firm said: “Vietnamese enterprises need a strategy for international trademark registration with good consideration for cost, time, quantity and country of registration.”

Khương advised businesses to learn carefully about the register to save time, cost and bring the best effect to the trademark in a foreign country.

Lawyer Lê Quang Vinh from BROSS & Partners Law Firm added: “If the enterprises don’t register for IP protection, they will lose export opportunities to expand their markets and will face with legal risks and lose many opportunities to benefit from free trade agreements like CPTPP, EVFTA, RCEP.

“If they discover that their IP rights have been lost, it is necessary to quickly research and collect evidence, file an objection and cancel or suspend the validity of the rights.”

At the same time, seeing the increasingly deepening international integration of Việt Nam through the participation in the new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs) as well as the wave of the industrial revolution 4.0 and the trend of trade protection in the world, the National Office of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Science and Technology also organised a consultation workshop on the draft law to amend and supplement the current IP Law in Hà Nội earlier this week.

It was expected that after this process, the law will have 18 chapters and 235 articles. — VNS