The fruits of international cooperation have also made contribution to the enhancement of international image of the National Office of Industrial Property in the heart of other countries and international organizations.

Industrial property information activities

To date, the National Office of Industrial Property has conducted the industrial property information and documentation exchange with 27 countries and international organizations, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO) and patent offices of developed countries like the United States, Japan, France, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom and Australia etc.

Thanks to the efficient international relations activities, over past years the National Office of Industrial Property received much precious patent documentation. As of the end of 2001, the database available at National Office of Industrial Property consists of 24,619,020, 2,893,937, 1,095,789 specifications for inventions/utility solutions, trademarks, industrial designs, respectively, and dozens of thousands of industrial property gazettes of other countries and organizations which are mainly in the form of CD-ROM and expressed in popular languages, namely Russian, English, French and German so they could be easily used.

In order to make use of the said database, the National Office of Industrial Property commenced to establish necessary search tools, such as searching cards for invention, trademarks and industrial designs classification in Vietnamese and establishment of keywords for industrial property information search.

Besides serving the examination purpose at the National Office of Industrial Property, the database has been exploited for R&D activities, production and business of domestic individuals and organizations. To enable public access the industrial property information, the national Office of Industrial Property opened a reading room (in the form of a library) equipped with modern equipment for the information searching purpose of readers. During 10 years from 1992 to 2001, there are 12,022 visits of readers to the room. Also during that time, the National Office of Industrial Property had carried out about 2,500 search requests for inventions and utility solution information and provided dozens of thousands of specification for inventions and utility solutions to individuals and organizations at their requests.

In recent years, the number of applications for searching trademarks and industrial designs for the purposes of production, business and handling of violation from enforcement agencies has considerably increased. During 6 years from 1996 to 2001 only, the National Office of Industrial Property met 19,028 requests for searching trademarks and industrial designs. With a view to making use of industrial property information for the purposes of R&D, production and business activities nationwide, the National Office of Industrial Property assisted the Center for Science, Technology and Environment Information of Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang City to establish their industrial property databases by supplying each centers with millions of patent specifications, mainly stored on CD-ROM, with thousands of industrial property gazettes of Vietnam, other countries and international organizations. The National Office of Industrial Property also provided them with searching equipment and assisted them in training expert in industrial property information and documentation. These Centers have been making efficient use of their obtained database to serve R&D, production and business activities of individuals, organizations in cities and neighboring provinces.