Vietnam Intellectual Property Law - No. 50/2005/QH11

LAW

ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Legislature XI, Session 8
(From 18 October until 29 November 2005)

Pursuant to the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as amended by Resolution 51/2001/QH10 passed by Legislature X of the National Assembly at its 10th Session on 25 December 2001;
This Law regulates intellectual property.

PART I

GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 1. Governing scope

This Law regulates copyright, copyright related rights, industrial property rights and rights to plant varieties; and the protection of such rights.

Article 2. Applicable entities

This Law shall apply to Vietnamese organizations and individuals and to foreign organizations and individuals who satisfy the conditions stipulated in this Law and in any international treaty of which the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a member.

Article 3. Subject matter of intellectual property rights

1. The subject matter of copyright shall comprise literary, artistic and scientific works; the subject matter of copyright related rights shall comprise performances, audio and visual fixation, broadcasts and satellite signals carrying coded programmes.
2. The subject matter of industrial property rights shall comprise inventions, industrial designs, designs of semi-conducting closed circuits, trade secrets, marks, trade names and geographical indications.
3. The subject matter of rights to plant varieties shall comprise plant varieties and reproductive materials.

Article 4. Interpretation of terms

In this Law, the following terms shall be construed as follows:

1. Intellectual property rights means rights of an organization or individual to intellectual assets comprising copyright and copyright related rights, industrial property rights and rights to plant varieties.
2. Copyright means rights of an organization or individual to works which such organization or individual created or owns.
3. Copyright related rights (hereinafter referred to as related rights) means rights of an organization or individual to performances, audio and visual fixation, and broadcasts and satellite signals carrying coded programmes.
4. Industrial property rights means rights of an organization or individual to inventions, industrial designs, designs of semi-conducting closed circuits, trade secrets, marks, trade names and geographical indications which such organization or individual created or owns, and the right to prevent unfair competition.
5. Rights to plant varieties means rights of an organization or individual to new plant varieties which such organization or individual has selected and created, discovered and developed, or which they own.
6. Intellectual property right holder means an owner of intellectual property rights or an organization or individual to whom intellectual property rights are assigned by the owner.
7. Work means a creation of the mind in the literary, artistic or scientific sector, expressed in any mode or form.
8. Derivative work means a work translated from one language into another; or an adapted, modified, transformed, compiled, annotated or selected work.
9. Published work, audio and visual fixation means a work or audio and visual fixation which has been published with the permission of the copyright holder or related right holder in order to distribute it to the public in a reasonable amount of copies.
10. Reproduction means the making of one or more copies of a work, audio and visual fixation by whatever mode or in whatever form, including permanent or provisional backup of the work in electronic form.
11. Broadcasting means the transmission of sound or image or both sound and image of a work, performance, audio and visual fixation or broadcast to the public by wireless or landline means including satellite transmission, in such a way that the public may access such work from any place and time the public selects.
12. Invention means a technical solution in the form of a product or process which is intended to solve a problem by application of natural laws.
13. Industrial design means the outward appearance of a product embodied in three dimensional configuration, lines, colours or a combination of such elements.
14. Semiconductor integrated circuit means a product in its intermediate or final form in which the elements, at least one of which is an active element, and some or all of the interconnections, are integrally formed in or on a piece of semiconductor material and which is intended to perform an electronic function. Integrated circuit is synonymous with IC, chip and micro-electronic circuit.
15. Design of semi-conducting closed circuits (hereinafter referred to as layout design) means a three dimensional disposition of circuit elements and their interconnections in a semi-conducting closed circuit.
16. Mark means any sign used to distinguish goods or services of different organizations or individuals.
17. Collective mark means a mark used to distinguish goods or services of members of an organization which is the owner of such mark from marks of non-members of such organization.
18. Certification mark means a mark which is authorized by its owner to be used by another organization or individual on the latter’s goods or services in order to certify the origin, raw materials, materials, mode of manufacture of goods or manner of provision of services, and the quality, accuracy, safety or other characteristic of goods or services bearing such mark.
19. Integrated marks means identical or similar marks registered by the same entity and intended for use on products or services which are of the same, similar or interrelated type.
20. Well known mark means a mark widely known by consumers throughout the territory of Vietnam.
21. Trade name means the designation of an organization or individual used in business activities in order to distinguish the business entity bearing such trade name from other business entities in the same business sector and area.

Business area as stipulated in this clause means the geographical area in which a business entity has its partners, customers or reputation.

22. Geographical indication means the sign used to identify a product as originating from a specific region, locality, territory or country.
23. Trade secret means information obtained from activities of financial or intellectual investment, which has not yet been disclosed and which is able to be used in business.
24. Plant variety means a plant grouping within a single botanical taxon of the lowest known rank, which is morphologically uniform and suitable for being propagated unchanged, and can be defined by the expression of phenotypes resulting from a genotype or a combination of given genotypes, and distinguished from any other plant grouping by the expression of at least one inheritable phenotype.
25. Protection title means a document granted by the competent State body to an organization or individual in order to establish industrial property rights to an invention, industrial design, layout design, mark or geographical indication; or in order to establish rights to a plant variety.