A seminar of “”Improving effectiveness of intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement to protect interests of enterprises and consumers” has been held in Binh Duong province with participation of nearly 100 officials and enterprises. After the seminar, enterprises obtained an overview of the significance of IPR protection, and necessary knowledge of IPR registration.
Enterprises are still subjective
According to provincial Market Control Bureau’s Deputy Head Nguyen Thanh Danh, since early this year, they have handled 36 cases of counterfeit good production violating IPR. Some enterprises have paid much attention to helping authorities to detect fake products. But the number of enterprises like that is still small, because most enterprises are afraid of negative effects on revenue and brand name. Therefore, some violations were not handled stringently due to lack of cooperation from enterprises.
Counterfeit cosmetics were caught by Thuan An public security.
In fact, fake products have been sold widely on the market, causing economic losses to enterprises and consumers, affecting domestic business environment, decreasing FDI investment attraction, and eroding creativity.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Van Khiem, Head of Science and Technology Ministry’s southern bureau, said, people’s awareness of counterfeit goods has many problems. In remote areas, because of low prices, people still buy counterfeit products, although they know they are fake goods.
According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Van Khiem, there are also some enterprises do not have sufficient market information, thus they decide to duplicate designs of other brands to enter the market quickly. This is the reason why many businesses have not paid attention to their brand name protection, while counterfeiters know how to dodge.
Good coordination for IPR protection
Some companies have paid much attention to IPR violation. According to a representative of Tan Hiep Phat Company, it is not easy to bring a product to market. Their products are usually duplicated for unfair competition. Hence, the company protect their products by register their trademark, designs, patents, and other IPs. This helps the company to lessen imitation from competitors.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Van Khiem affirmed, improving IPR enforcement in Vietnam is critical. Enterprises, authorities, consumers need to have high awareness of IPR protection as well as coordinate to struggle against counterfeit goods.
In addition, enterprises and business associations should notify consumers of fake products, encourage denouncement of fake goods, and promote propaganda of IPR among the community. Particularly, enterprises should collaborate actively with authorities to struggle against counterfeiting, and keep improving their products to meet market demands, develop Vietnamese brand names.
Reported by H.Van - Translated by Ngoc Huynh
