Business "complain" because of trademark infringement

As the scale of the economy expands, intellectual property activity becomes more and more important. Photo by Nguyen Hien.

Registration protection, still be infringed

There are cases of businesses expanding business in new markets have "flabbergasted" when be infringed of intellectual property rights. Some domestic companies when entering the new international playground surprised when their brand has been registered by others.

Mr. Le Ngoc Lam, Deputy Director General of the National Office of Intellectual Property (Ministry of Science and Technology) cited the case of Vinataba. This is a successful cigarette business in the Vietnamese market but when it was exported to the world market, it was registered by a company named Putra Salbat Industry in all countries in the South East Asia. Or, like Buon Ma Thuot coffee, Trung Nguyen coffee, Sa Giang shrimp cake, Ben Tre coconut candy, Phu Quoc fish sauce etc. also become "victims" of unregistered intellectual property should lead to infringes upon intellectual property rights, which have been "looted" in some markets.

Leading up to this evidence, Mr. Lam said that enterprises have to draw lessons for themselves. Accordingly, in the development process, the first thing with every business must think of intellectual property registration. This does not only help businesses keep monopoly activities, products, and services provided to the market based on intellectual property rights but also can prevent competitors from producing and trading products, service without the opinion of the businesses. "This is an effective tool to help businesses monopolize the market and sustainable development," Mr.Lam said.

However, ironically, many companies have been aware of, registering intellectual property right from the very early, while well performing the protection but still infringed. The case of Vietnam Airlines is an example. Shared at the workshop "Brand development and pricing" recently, Mr. Nguyen Thy Son, intellectual property management officer of Vietnam Airlines said, not only registered for domestic protection, Vietnam Airlines also registered for protection in 94 countries around the world - something few businesses do. This registration helps companies not afraid of any trademark disputes when enterprises exploit the market. Vietnam Airlines is experiencing difficulty in violating Vietnam Airlines' trademark, image, and reputation in the market. "This is a traumatic issue when we discover thousands of illegal ticket sales points every year without the permission of Vietnam Airlines. This violation is not in the form of people carrying the letter Vietnam Airlines to business that people "follow" the reputation for producing goods and services brand image of Vietnam Airlines", said Mr. Son.

Recommend for 6 years, no one resolved

Knowing the infringement of the brand that businesses seem to "force the mind," according to enterprises, sanctions for the handling of violations have existed, but the handling of violations in the market is related to local authorities, Police, Market management. Mr. Son said: "We only work with the National Office of Intellectual Property but without the local authorities, police, market management. Only really big and serious cases, they just "jump in" but when re-put the problem in another way rather than follow the function mandate.

Therefore, he suggested, there should be opinions of the ministries to implement this issue because this is a problem many businesses have. Not only stop there, Mr. Son also reflected, there are requests from Vietnam Airlines for trademark infringement, photos were sent 6 years ago but not resolved whether it is very clear violations. This fact may be due to the intellectual property agency overloaded, but Mr. Son also does not exclude the situation of implementing agencies supporting business is not good.

With the information that was mentioned by businesses, also at the above seminar, the representative of the National Office of Intellectual Property quite surprised and suggested the businesses to re-supply the number of documents to test. Explaining the initial cause of the situation, Mr. Lam said there was overload at the agency responsible for intellectual property, but there are cases where the proposals fall into the deprecated status, dependent on the previous submission.

Besides acknowledging the overcrowding, Mr. Lam does not forget to mention the sense of enterprise in the registration of intellectual property rights when raising the fact that many companies have registered and leave there, do not care about the trademark, their intellectual property rights arise, whether they entangled in the market or not. If the company left open, do not care, see themselves compromised without any action, waiting for the State is very difficult. He also acknowledged that the efficiency of enforcement of violations is not high for a number of reasons, including the lack of enforcement by intellectual property enforcement agencies, and businesses themselves also avoided that fact. Therefore, if the case is processed quickly, the enterprise must have information, even need to coordinate.

There is no denying that enterprises have not paid much attention to intellectual property registration but if Mr. Son's problems are not resolved, in other words, the coordination and cooperation between the parties are not effective, so enterprises’ difficulties cannot be reduced.