Japan Patent Office (JPO) experts will work with NOIP on specific contents before submitting to the Government of Japan for approval of industrial property applications. The agency will also cooperate with WIPO and partners to assist NOIP in matters related to the acquisition of intellectual property data.
The Japan Patent Office (JPO) will assist the National Office of Intellectual Property (NOIP) under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam (MoST) to implement the project. This action will comprehensively improve the ability of processing applications for the each sections.
NOIP Director Dinh Huu Phi said that, as an intellectual property authority, NOIP has proposed many specific measures to promote innovation activities related to intellectual property and to deal with problems about pending processing of industrial property protection applications.
NOIP requested JPO to continue its assistance in processing industrial property registration through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and to obtain intellectual property data through the Japan Trust Fund (JFIT).
Accordingly, Vietnam and Japan will establish a joint working group to discuss cooperation programs on rapid examination of patent applications, human resource development and patent quality management.
Recently, the Japan Trust Fund has helped NOIP upgrade its information technology infrastructure and capacity. A large number of Vietnamese staff working in this field have been trained under Foundation support.
Mr. Phi said that JPO will help the Department in adjusting policies to improve the efficiency of intellectual property protection and exploitation; enhances the NOIP’s ability to appraise industrial property protection applications; accelerate the automation of the registration management system of intellectual property and promote cooperation in this area.
Currently, the number of industrial property protection applications filed with the NOIP is increasing; while the processing capacity still remains limited, leading to a large number of backlogged applications.
In 2017, NOIP received more than 102,000 applications, including 58,800 applications to register intellectual property rights. The Department processed more than 80,000 applications, including 39,000 industrial property rights registrations, an increase of 1% compared to 2016.
You can find the list of Vietnam IP Firms here.
You can find the list of Japan IP Firms here.