In order to have legal grounds to prevent and properly punish increasingly sophisticated crimes related to information technology and telecommunications (ITT) networks, which could cause very serious consequences to socio-economic activities, national defense and security, ITT-related criminal acts need to be prescribed in the Penal Code as well as specialized laws[1]. In the 2015 Penal Code (revised in 2017) (the Code), these acts are grouped into nine crimes in Section 2 of Chapter XXI[2].

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism plans to step up inspections this year to improve protection for intellectual property rights (IPR).

Tax offices would directly supervise operations of casinos in localities, proposed the Ministry of Finance in a draft circular guiding the management and supervision of tax collection for casino business activities under Government Decree 03 issued in January.

The revised Law on Technology Transfer, which was passed in June, is expected to create a solid legal basis to promote technology transfer, technology innovation, commercialization of scientific research and technological development results, and application of latest science and technology advances.

Le Ngoc Lam, Deputy Director of the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam of the Ministry of Science and Technology, talks with Hai Quan (Customs) newspaper on revision of the current Law on Intellectual Property of Vietnam, which was officially enacted in July 2006 and revised in 2009.

Vietnam has so far had three Civil Codes of 1995, 2005 and 2015 since January 4, 1995, when the Vietnamese Government filed a formal request for accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Each of these Civil Codes presents an interestingly different point of view on intellectual property (IP) in relation to the national system of IP rights protection, as briefly depicted below.

Online insurance transactions will be conducted through the e-portal of the Vietnam Social Security or websites of e-transaction service providers in the field of social insurance.

Under the United Nations Provisional Central Products Classification, the distribution service sector comprises four major types of services, namely commission agents’ services, wholesale trade services, retailing services and franchising services.

The Prime Minister signed last month Decree No. 85/2011/ND-CP (the Decree) to revise Government Decree No. 100/2006/ND-CP of July 21, 2006, guiding a numbers of articles of the Civil Code and the Intellectual Property Law regarding copyright and related rights.

Industrial property constitutes one of the important domains of intellectual property. Formerly, as Vietnam developed a purely agricultural and self-sufficient economy without international economic integration, the industrial property issue did not appear in practical life and was not governed by law.