Receiving, examining applications and granting protection titles

As the result of the issuance of the Ordinance on the protection of industrial property rights (11 February 1989) by the State Council, the number of applications dramatically increased. During the period of 7 years from 1981 to 1989 the National Office of Inventions received 2,163 applications for industrial property rights whereas in 1990 only it received a total of 1,825 applications. The growth of number of applications and granted protection titles continued in the following years. In 2001, the National Office of Industrial Property received the total number of 8,765 applications of which were 1,286, 1,052, 6,345 and 82 applications for inventions, industrial designs, trademarks and utility solutions, respectively.

In total, from its establishment to the end of 2001, the National Office of Industrial Property received 77,430 applications for industrial property rights (9,002, 746, 11,314 and 56,366 applications for inventions, utility solutions, industrial designs and trademarks, respectively) and granted 48,923 protection titles (2,517 patents for inventions, 268 patents for utility solutions, 6,628 patents for industrial designs, 39,510 certificates for registration of trademarks and 2 certificates for registration of appellation of origin.

IP Application Receiving Department

As far as trademark is concerned, apart from the applications directly filed with the National Office of Industrial Property, it also examined 54,900 applications for trademark protection in Vietnam by foreign enterprises under the Madrid Agreement and accepted for the protection to above 50,000 trademarks. Thus, up to the end of 2001, the number of protected trademarks in Vietnam went up to nearly 100,000.