Over 96% Vietnamese patents belong to foreigners

Foreigners are the owners of over 96% of patents registered in Vietnam over the past 18 years, according to the statistics recently released by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

From 1996 to 2013, foreigners are the owners of around 11,500 patents, (96.4%) of nearly 12,000 patents registered in Vietnam. While, just over 400 Vietnamese people were conferred the exclusive patent rights in the same period. In 2013, only 53 of 1,200 granted patents belonged to Vietnamese.

Lawyer, Pham Vu Khanh Toan – Managing partner of Pham & Associates said that the rate of Vietnamese people filing patent applicant was very low, less than 10%. In the total of 590 patent applications applied through Pham & Associates in 2013, the number of Vietnamese patent applicants were negligible. Furthermore, the quality of patent/utility solution applications of Vietnamese people were often not high, poor descriptions and the ability for registration was not high as a result. The figures shown that capacity for research and development of domestic organizations and individuals were very much worse than the world.

Pham & Associates