In particular, the number of patent applications increased by 22.7%, applications for the registration of industrial designs increased by 23.5%, applications for national trademark registration rose by 11.4%. The rising number of applications for establishing industrial property rights represented the increasing demand for protection of intellectual property rights.
Enterprises want to protect industrial property objects to develop production and business activities, especially in promotional activities to increase the competitiveness of products and protect their rights when disputes occur. Meanwhile, scientists are more concerned about the applicability of research results.
In addition, localities, research institutes and universities currently have many mechanisms to support the registration of intellectual property rights, such as providing training and improving the ability to identify and select suitable intellectual property mechanisms for businesses. The rapid increase in the need to register intellectual property rights is also an important indicator of the increasing awareness of scientists and businesses in the process of protecting their ideas and inventions in the context of the current Fourth Industrial Revolution.
However, there is the fact that the increasing number of applications is also posing a challenge for the National Office of Intellectual Property due to the limited capacity of assessment and facilities.
Although in the first 6 months of the year, the processing of industrial property registration applications increased by 66.8% compared to the same period in 2018 and the Office has devised many solutions to speed up the application evaluation. However they are only focusing on dealing with applications in previous years while those submitted in 2018 and 2019 are still having to wait. Therefore, the appraisal and granting of industrial property rights only meet part of society’s demand.
According to regulations, the time limit for granting property rights for a patent is 21 months, for an industrial design is 10 months, a trademark is 12 months (from the registration date), but in fact, the time limit is usually extended from three to four years. This greatly affects the operation and business efficiency of businesses.
A representative of a business said that he had to wait for three years before being granted a patent for a utility solution. During that time, although the company’s mechanical products were being counterfeited in the market, they could not sue. When the protection certificate was granted, fake products had been sold for many years and the process of suing took a lot of time and money.
Another company has been waiting for two years to be granted a trademark certificate for a functional food product. Currently, its plan of product introduction has still been halted, while the company has invested in the production line.
With the increasing level of interest and awareness of sustainable development of enterprises, along with mechanisms to support registration of intellectual property rights, it is forecasted that the number of industrial property applications will continue to rise rapidly. Therefore, the appraisal and granting of industrial property rights should be accelerated in order to be able to meet the current high demand.
Synchronous solutions need to be implemented to remove bottlenecks as well as speed up this process such as: application of information technology to manage applications; strengthening and improving the quality of appraisers, investing in facilities and equipment for the appraisal; among others.
