Intellectual property spurs innovation

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According to Hoang Van Tan, deputy director general of the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Intellectual Property Authority of  Vietnam (IPAV), the topic of the action in week in Vietnam in response to the Intellectual Property Day launched by the IPAV is “Intellectual Property Spurs Innovation”.

“If we can do a good job protecting and creating opportunities for those creations to find their ways into production, and safeguarding the interests of the innovators, we can create the incentive for them to keep up their innovative work even more. On the contrary, when innovation is not protected and fostered, all creation and development will dissipate,” said Tan.

Given the far and wide integration of Vietnam in the global economy, intellectual property rights protection has become a must.

“The current Intellectual property Law of Vietnam has proved to be in alignment with international treaties and common protective practices in the world,” said Vu Ngoc Hoan, acting director general of the Copyright Office of Vietnam under  the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. “Legal regulations in Vietnam in relation to copyright and related rights have been in place in a relatively coordinated and systematic fashion, and robust enough to regulate social relations pertaining to copyright and related rights in Vietnam, as well as to create a legal environment conducive to international integration and make a critical contribution to promoting innovation, healthy competition and attract investment for national development.”

Information technology is one of the flagship industries where intellectual property protection is key to development. Vu Minh Tri, CEO of  Microsoft Vietnam said that: “Software piracy is no doubt the main impediment to development. Software infringers deter software developers and hinder business expansion, given the typical nature of the technology products created by software developers being a short life-cycle, thus intellectual property helps create a big momentum for continued investment in research and development for the quick introduction of advanced technologies to create better products to meet the ever increasing needs of the society.” 

Over the years, intellectual property protection efforts in different fields have achieved impressive progress, including cinema, music, books, and so on, and particularly software.

Hoan admitted that the current infringement rate of copyright and related right in Vietnam remained high.

“Illegal copying of cultural products, use of musical creations without paying royalty to owners, use of unlicensed software, intrusion of satellite signals carrying encrypted programmes and other infringements of copyrights and related rights continue to take place on a regular basis. Such copyright infringement has been detrimental to copyright owners and adversely affected innovation as well as the local investment climate and economic-cultural cooperation with other countries,” he said

For example, a local software publisher Lac Viet Co. estimated a loss of close to $50 million worth of copyright of the Lac Viet dictionary software since 1995 when the application was first released.

Intellectual property protection for software copyright, seen as a rather new experience as it was initiated back in 2004, has made quite impressive progress to date.  Of  note, the recent first ever software copyright infringement lawsuit initiated by Lac Viet and Microsoft in late 2013 marked a first bold step in software copyright protection efforts in Vietnam.

Looking back at the 10-year software piracy campaign in Vietnam, Tarun Sawney, director for anti-piracy, Asia Pacific, of the Software Alliance said: “With the software piracy rate slashing 11 points from 92 per cent in 2004 to 81 per cent in 2011, Vietnam has been recognised as one of the countries with the most robust and impressive steps forward in the battle against software piracy.  This progress would be impossible without the major efforts of agencies of the Vietnamese government, and other organisations and  software firms”.