According to the law on Intellectual Property of Vietnam, any third parties have the right to
send opinion to the National Office of Intellectual Property in Vietnam (NOIP)
regarding industrial property right, granting or not granting protection title
to an application. When a third party may give the opinion and how NOIP will
handle that opinion?
Firstly, the third party
has the right to send opinion from the time of publishing the industrial
publication on industrial Gazette till before the date of issuing the decision
on granting protection title. Accordingly, the opinion must be in written form
and attached the documents or sources of information for evidences. The written opinion of the third party
is also a source of information for examining the industrial application.
Secondly, after the
opinion of the third party submitted into NOIP, there would be the following
cases:
-In case the opinion of
the third party has legal grounds, NOIP will notify of the opinion to the
applicant and set a time limit for applicant to reply to the written opinion.
After receiving the response of the applicant, if necessary, NOIP informs that
response of the applicant to the third party and set a time limit for third
party to reply. After that time limit, NOIP shall process opinion of the
applicant and the third party according to the evidence and arguments provided
by the parties and documents included in the application. The third party shall
also be informed of the results of substantive examination of corresponding
application;
-In case the opinion of
the third party is groundless, NOIP is not required to notify the applicant of
those opinions but shall notify the third party of its refusal to consider the
opinions, clearly stating the reason thereof;
-In case the opinion of
the third party are related to the registration right, when finding it
impossible to determine whether such opinions are supported with legal ground
or not, NOIP shall notify the third party so that the latter can file a lawsuit
to a competent court in accordance with regulations of the Civil Procedure
Code. Within 01 month from the date on which the NOIP issues the notice, if the
third party fails to send the NOIP the copy of the notice of case acceptance of
the court, it will be considered that the third party has withdrawn the lawsuit
and continue to process the application without the third party’s opinions. If
the NOIP receives such copy within the abovementioned time limit, the NOIP
shall suspend the application processing until the results of dispute settlement
by the court are obtained. After the results of dispute settlement by the court
are obtained, the application processing shall be resumed in accordance with
those results.
Besides, during the
above processing, NOIP may organize a face-to-face meeting between the third
party and the applicant to further clarify the opposition.
If the client needs help
with handling such complaint, our intellectual property attorney in
Vietnam at ANT Lawyers will be of help.
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