Copyright infringement in Vietnam

Copyright is one of the intellectual property rights and is protected by intellectual property law. However, in reality, many acts affect copyright and infringe upon the legitimate rights of authors and copyright owners in general. What are the latest acts considered copyright infringement in Vietnam under current law? Viet An Law will answer for clients in the following article.

What is copyright in Vietnam?

According to Clause 2, Article 4, Articles 18-20 of the Intellectual Property Law 2005 (amended in 2010, 2019, 2022), copyright is defined as the rights of organizations and individuals to works they have created or own, including moral rights and economic rights. Specifically:

Copyright protection mechanism

According to Clause 1, Article 6 of the Intellectual Property Law 2005 (amended in 2010, 2019, 2022), copyright arises as soon as a work is created and expressed in a tangible form, regardless of its content, quality, form, medium, language, whether or not it has been published, or whether or not it has been registered.

As such, the copyright protection mechanism is quite special because copyright protection does not depend on registration. Therefore, in reality, many authors are “subjective” and do not register their copyrights, leading to their legitimate rights being infringed.

In such cases, to protect their rights, authors must prove that they are the creators or owners of the work. Of course, proving this is not always simple, and in many cases, authors may find it difficult to prove their legitimate rights and have to accept the “loss” of their work.

Acts of copyright infringement in Vietnam

What is copyright infringement?

Copyright infringement occurs when an individual or organization, who is not the author or has been authorized or assigned copyright by the author (collectively referred to as an unauthorized party), exercises the copyright as stated in the first part. This negatively affects the legitimate rights and interests of the author or copyright owner.

For example: “stealing” someone else’s work, publishing a work that was not created by oneself, performing a song in public (at festivals, conferences, etc., with a large audience).

Acts considered copyright infringement

According to Article 29 of the Intellectual Property Law 2005 (amended in 2010, 2019, 2022), the copyright infringement acts include:

• Infringement of moral rights.
• Infringement of economic rights.
• Failing to perform or improperly performing the obligations specified in Articles 25, 25a, and 26 of this Law.
• Intentionally canceling or deactivating effective technological measures taken by authors or copyright owners to protect copyright to their works to perform the acts specified in this Article and Article 35 of this Law.
• Manufacturing, distributing, importing, offering for sale, selling, promoting, advertising, marketing, leasing or stockpiling for commercial purposes equipment, products, or components, introducing or providing services when knowing or having grounds to know that such equipment, products, components or services are manufactured or used to deactivate effective technological measures for copyright protection.
• Intentionally deleting, removing, or modifying rights management information without permission of authors or copyright owners when knowing or having grounds to know that the performance of such acts will instigate, enable, facilitate, or conceal acts of infringing upon copyright per law.
• Intentionally distributing, importing for distribution, broadcasting, communicating, or providing to the public copies of works when knowing or having grounds to know that rights management information has been deleted, removed, or changed without permission of copyright owners; or when knowing or having grounds to know that the performance of such acts will instigate, enable, facilitate or conceal acts of infringing upon copyright following law.
• Failing to implement or improperly implementing regulations for being exempted from legal liability of intermediary service providers specified in Clause 3, Article 198b of this Law.

What should be done to protect copyright?

According to Articles 198, 202, 211, and 212 of the Law on Intellectual Property 2005 (as amended and supplemented in 2010, 2019, and 2022), authors and copyright owners can take the following measures to protect their legitimate rights and interests.

Self-protection measures

• Applying technological measures to protect rights and disseminate information on the management of rights, or apply other technological measures to prevent acts of infringing upon intellectual property rights;
• Requesting organizations or individuals that commit acts of infringing upon intellectual property rights to terminate such acts, remove and delete infringing contents in the telecommunications network and the Internet, make public apologies or rectifications, and pay damages
• Requesting competent state agencies to handle acts of infringing upon intellectual property rights according to the provisions of this Law and other relevant provisions of the law;
• Initiating lawsuits at courts or arbitration centers to protect their legitimate rights and interests.

Civil measures

The Court is the only competent authority to apply civil measures. Therefore, to apply these measures to protect their legitimate rights and interests, the author/copyright owner has the right to personally or authorize another person to request the Court to apply civil measures. Civil measures include:

• Compelling the termination of infringing acts;
• Compelling the public apology and rectification;
• Compelling the performance of civil obligations;
• Compelling the payment of damages;
• Compelling destruction, distribution, or use for non-commercial purposes of goods, raw materials, materials, and means used largely for the production or trading of intellectual property right-infringing goods, provided that such destruction, distribution, or use does not affect the exploitation of rights by intellectual property right owners.

Administrative and criminal measures

Similar to civil measures, administrative and criminal measures can only be imposed by competent authorities. However, it is important to note that these measures are only applicable to acts of copyright infringement that violate the law.

For administrative and criminal measures, authors or copyright owners need to request the competent authority when there are signs of illegal acts that infringe upon their legitimate rights and interests.

Therefore, Viet An Law has provided you with a list of the latest acts considered copyright infringement in Vietnam under current law. If you have any further questions or need legal support, please contact Viet An Law for timely assistance.