At the moment, Vietnam is a member of many international economic organizations, taking part in discussions about free trade agreements like Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), especially those regarding intellectual property.
2019, it joined Hague Agreement concerning the international registration of industrial design by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Nevertheless, the toughest challenge of scientific-technological organizations as well as businesses in Vietnam is to turn research results into practical products for the community. Many of these groups possess no clear policy about intellectual property, leading to difficulties in promoting creativity, right registration process, technology transfer, and research result commercialization procedures.
In 2019, the number of invention orders in Vietnam reached over 1,000 for the first time, an increase of 42 percent compared to 2018. Several of these come from universities and research institutes, which have had articles published on International Scientific Indexing (ISI) journals.
Yet unlike their international counterparts where intellectual property matters are dealt with continuously to both increase the reputation and improve research quality, domestic research institutes are quite unfamiliar with procedures as to intellectual property.
Therefore, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) has decided to form a close connection among the 30 intellectual property centers nationwide in order to carry out technology transfer in universities and research institutes.
Also 20 out of the above centers are now members of the project ‘Creating an Intellectual Property Environment’, held by WIPO.
In the upcoming time, MST is going to focus on boosting the strength of research teams and universities in intellectual property right registration, rising the number of inventions in Vietnam, and promoting the commercialization of intellectual property.
To fulfill that goal, it is necessary to instill professionalism and improve the management ability of related state units regarding intellectual property. In addition, the cooperation between research institutes and businesses is one key factor to decide the goal achievement.
