Vietnamese companies were urged to pay more attention to overseas trademark protection registration as intellectual property rights were becoming increasingly important in international trade.
At a workshop on trends and measures of brand development and intellectual property protection in international trade held on November 5 in Hanoi, experts said brands and intellectual property were incrementally ruling global product value, noting that brand value now accounted for one-third of the global economy’s value.
Doan Duy Khuong, Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said brand and trademark building should always be associated with registration for intellectual property protection.
Brands were critical for a sustainable economy, he said, adding that a competitive economy required competitive brands in both domestic and international markets.
However, VCCI statistics show that only about 1,000 Vietnamese trademarks are currently registered overseas, just a modest number compared with hundreds of thousands of existing Vietnamese companies.
Many companies have not paid due attention to trademark registration, especially overseas, and some don’t even fully understand independent protection principles under the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, said Tran Van Hai, head of the Intellectual Property Division of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Small, medium and large enterprises risked losing their intellectual property in international trade, he said, urging domestic companies to have a better understanding of international trademark protection principles.
At the workshop, experts also urged Vietnamese companies to pay attention to online brand identity in a rapidly changing and digital world, as this allowed for differences in competition.-
