The Authority is responsible for administering the IP protection system. Under its direction, Singapore has conducted a public education campaign aimed at increasing public awareness of IP rights. Today, Singapore is one of the leading countries in the number of applications for patents and other intellectual property rights.
- Strengthening the operational capacity of agencies managing and enforcing intellectual property rights
+ Training and fostering human resources for state management work and
Enforcement of intellectual property rights: It is necessary to develop training programs and human resource development in the field of intellectual property rights suitable for different subjects such as court officials, and specialized officials in charge of managing intellectual property rights at all levels from central to local and enterprises.
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+ Strengthening the capacity of courts and customs forces: Courts need to be empowered to use tools and sanctions strong enough to prevent infringements of intellectual property rights and must become the main agency in resolving disputes over intellectual property rights. There needs to be a training program for a team of judges and lawyers with high professional capacity on intellectual property rights issues. Courts need to immediately conduct research on complex issues arising in the process of adjudicating intellectual property disputes such as valuation of intellectual property, determination of damages caused by infringements of intellectual property rights, etc.
On the customs side, it is necessary to strengthen the enforcement of intellectual property rights at the border, because this is an effective measure to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights. The main purpose of this measure is to prevent and eliminate goods infringing intellectual property rights from entering the market from import and export activities, thereby ensuring the rights and legitimate interests of legal owners and creating fair competition between parties in international trade. Vietnam needs to coordinate activities with the World Customs Organization (WCO) to resolve and enforce intellectual property rights. This organization has issued documents
customs legislation to assist members in implementing the provisions of the TRIPs Agreement.
+ Perfecting the information system on intellectual property rights: It is necessary to build and perfect search tools in accordance with international practices and conditions in Vietnam. On the other hand, it is necessary to invest in reforming and modernizing the information system on intellectual property rights to meet the needs of searching for information related to intellectual property rights such as trademarks, brands, and to avoid duplication in granting protection certificates. Currently, at the Department of Intellectual Property, the information network supporting businesses in searching for information related to intellectual property rights such as trademarks, brands, etc. is still not really convenient. In fact, the shortcomings in information of the appraisal agency always lead to the protection of the wrong subjects, making the court very confused when resolving disputes. In addition, the agencies managing and enforcing intellectual property rights need to focus on organizing and compiling guidance documents, explaining the theory, policies, laws and practices related to the field of intellectual property rights.
3.2.2.3. Promote international cooperation in the field of intellectual property rights.
To fully implement its commitment to intellectual property rights protection under the TRIPs Agreement, Vietnam needs to promote international cooperation in this field. Because, as a developing country with a backward economy, Vietnam lacks both resources and experience to enforce intellectual property rights. Therefore, Vietnam is in great need of support, cooperation and experience sharing from countries in the region and the world, especially developed countries. If it does not know how to take full advantage of and exploit the assistance of international organizations in terms of human and material resources as well as learn from the experience of other countries in enforcing intellectual property rights, it will take a long time for Vietnam to catch up with the region and the world in this field. Through bilateral and multilateral cooperation programs, the capacity of Vietnam's legal system for intellectual property rights protection will be enhanced in four areas: legality, management, law enforcement and awareness raising.
Practices in recent times have proven this. For example, the European Commission-ASEAN Intellectual Property Rights Cooperation Program (ECAPII) has recently provided Vietnam with 1.5 million euros (equivalent to 31.4 billion VND) to implement 50 IP activities in all four areas above. In addition, the European Patent Office (EPO) will support Vietnam in raising awareness of industrial property activities, training and developing human resources, modernizing the process of processing and managing patent applications, and enhancing the exchange of patent information. In particular, this bilateral cooperation program allows Vietnam to directly connect free of charge via the Internet to Esp@cennet.com, the world's largest IP database containing more than 55 million patent documents. This direct connection helps Vietnamese agencies search and review documents more effectively. For Vietnamese small and medium enterprises, this is an extremely useful support. Because they do not have much financial potential, before researching and developing a product or service, businesses need to look up information to understand the situation in the world, avoiding repeating existing research and inventions. This is a potential tool for Vietnamese small and medium enterprises and is an effort by Europe to provide new information on inventions. Each year, this database has 1 million additional documents. In addition, the EPO also supports the publication of Vietnamese patent information on the Esp@cenet.com database. Thanks to that, information on intellectual property rights issues in our country is provided to the world community.
3.2.3. Exploiting the flexible provisions and exceptions of the TRIPs Agreement to serve development goals
The analysis in Chapter I shows that, to a certain extent, the TRIPs Agreement brings more benefits to developed countries, and these countries always seek to exploit every aspect of the regulations that are beneficial to them. As a country that is starting to carry out the process of industrialization and modernization, it is natural that Vietnam needs to try to take advantage of flexible regulations and exceptions.
TRIPs Agreement and cleverly “dodging” the regulations to maximize the benefits from intellectual property protection, avoiding unnecessary disadvantages. Specifically, Vietnam can realize this goal in the following areas:
- Implementing the protection of folk literature and art : The treasure of Vietnamese folk literature heritage is considered rich and valuable, and the preservation, development and exploitation of that treasure is very important. The Civil Code (1995) has affirmed that folk literature and art works are protected by the State according to separate regulations. However, in the 2005 Intellectual Property Law, Article 23, Clause 2 only stipulates: "Any organization or individual using folk literature and art works must cite the origin of that type of work and ensure the preservation of the true value of the folk literature and art work". Thus, everyone, including foreigners, can use our country's folk literature and art works without having to bear any economic obligations towards the communities that have contributed to the creation, preservation and development of those works. Meanwhile, the Bern Convention does not raise the issue of protection and does not prohibit the protection of anonymous folklore and folk art works after 50 years from the date of publication. Therefore, at the national level, countries can set regulations to protect their own folklore and folk art works. However, with the regulations set forth in the 2005 Intellectual Property Law, Vietnam has inadvertently created conditions for other countries to benefit while harming the economic interests of the community that has contributed to folklore and folk art works. This would probably not have happened if our experts and lawmakers had studied the Bern Convention more carefully. In the coming time, it is necessary to amend and supplement a number of articles of the 2005 Intellectual Property Law related to this field in the direction of protecting folklore and folk art works.
- Exploiting regulations for developing countries to allow copying and translating foreign works: The Appendix of the Bern Convention stipulates that developing countries are allowed to copy and translate foreign works in some
cases to meet public demand without the consent of the right holder. In fact, this is a beneficial provision for developing countries, including Vietnam, and we need to take advantage of this exception as much as possible. This incentive is valid for 10 years from the date of joining the Convention. However, surprisingly, since the Berne Convention came into effect in Vietnam, almost no units have used this priority right. They still trade and negotiate copyright with partners almost fairly, so the copyright price is still high at 8% or more. If compared to the price the Philippines bought at 3%, it is clear that Vietnamese units need to learn. According to Mr. Vu Manh Chu, Director of the Department of Copyright of Literary and Artistic Authors, "the 3% fee is very cheap, so domestic units need to achieve and take advantage of it. We need to make the most of the incentives that the Bern Convention gives us" .
- Narrowing the patent threshold. Since the TRIPs Agreement does not allow interference in how each country interprets its provisions and the TRIPs Agreement stipulates minimum standards but does not set a ceiling on what can be patented, Vietnam can apply them appropriately based on the country's needs and the level of development of its industries. For example, Argentina, Brazil and some other countries in South America do not grant patents for materials found in nature, even if found in a very isolated place, because they do not meet the requirements of "inventions". Meanwhile, under US and European law, biological materials that exist in nature can be considered to contribute to an invention if they are isolated and have a specific use value and if other conditions for invention are met (new and have an inventive step).
- Exploiting the "compulsory licensing" provision (also known as compulsory licensing) to reduce the monopoly of intellectual property owners: Article 31 of the TRIPs Agreement stipulates that the government or a third party authorized by the government can use inventions in emergency situations or in cases of
non-commercial public use under certain conditions without the consent of the IP right holder. This compulsory licensing provision can be seen as a solution to allow the Government to limit the monopoly of the right holder, especially in the pharmaceutical sector with drugs to treat diseases such as HIV/AIDS, so that it can produce products for the public at a much cheaper price than the level of royalties. South Africa's experience in this regard is worth referring to. The country's Medicines Law has taken advantage of the flexible provisions of the TRIPs Agreement to require owners to grant licenses or import equivalents for medicines (importing original or similar versions without the authorization of the patent owner). The law also allows the Minister of Health to revoke the rights on medicine patents in South Africa if those medicines are considered to be too expensive. Although these may be overly burdensome provisions, South African law can still be considered to be consistent with the Agreement.
TRIPs 16 .
From the above-mentioned viewpoints and approaches on continuing to innovate and improve the legal system on intellectual property rights to suit the integration trend in general and the TRIPs Agreement in particular, the current issue for Vietnam is to actively implement international commitments on intellectual property rights, especially in areas where effective intellectual property protection will bring great benefits to the people and the business community, and to strengthen the implementation of measures to limit the damage related to failure to properly assess or thoroughly understand intellectual property rights issues. In addition, Vietnam needs to fully and effectively exploit the flexible provisions and exceptions of the TRIPs Agreement to serve development goals. Success requires Vietnam to make outstanding efforts in many areas to seize opportunities and
16 World Bank (2004), Handbook on development, trade and the WTO , National Political Publishing House, Hanoi.
Minimize negative impacts in the implementation of policies and laws on intellectual property protection.
CONCLUDE
The world economy is developing strongly towards globalization and has an increasingly high knowledge content; knowledge and intellectual property play an increasingly important role in the socio-economic development of each country as well as the development of humanity in general. Therefore, the issue of intellectual property protection is receiving more attention than ever. At the international level, there are a series of international treaties, the most typical of which is the WTO TRIPs Agreement, which regulates the protection of intellectual property rights. At the national level, if countries want to participate in the economic globalization playground, their intellectual property protection systems must comply with and be compatible with international standards. This has posed enormous challenges to developing countries in their process of international economic integration. Because the TRIPs Agreement within the WTO framework is somewhat biased towards developed countries, while not paying due attention to the specific conditions of developing countries; In addition, because the issue of intellectual property rights is still relatively new in most developing countries, their institutional framework, policies, laws as well as their law enforcement capacity in this field are still inadequate. However, international economic integration through the WTO seems to be an inevitable trend for most countries, so the implementation of WTO agreements, including the TRIPs Agreement, is inevitable. Fully aware of this issue, developing countries that are preparing to become or have become WTO members have made many efforts to improve their intellectual property rights policies and laws in both aspects, namely completeness and enforcement, and at the same time trying to access the benefits that the Agreement can bring to them.
Vietnam has become a member of the WTO after 11 years of preparation. To achieve this result, Vietnam has made great efforts in all areas, including innovation and improvement of the intellectual property rights protection system. Compared with the TRIPs Agreement, the system of policies and laws on