Industrial Design

Industrial design registration is an important part of intellectual property, which is also an inevitable trend of developing countries like Vietnam. However, registration procedures for industrial design protection are more complicated than trademark registration. InvestOne hearby provides some breaf information about filing industrial design application in Vietnam as follows.

1. The legal basis:

• Intellectual Property Law (No. 50/2005/QH11 of November 29, 2005); supplemented and amended under Law No. 36/2009/QH12 of June 19, 2009;
• The Government’s Decree No. 103/2006/ND-CP of September 22, 2006, detailing and guiding the implementation of a number of articles of the 2005 Vietnam IP Law on industrial property; supplemented and amended under Decree No. 122/ND-CP dated December 31, 2010;
• Circular No. 01/2007/TT-BKHCN of February 14,2007 guiding the implementation of the Government’s Decree No. 103/2006/ND-CP; supplemented and amended on Circular No. 13/2010/TT-BKHCN of July 30, 2010 and Circular No. 18/2011/TT-BKHCN of July 22, 2011.
• Circular No. 263/2016/TT-BTC of November 14, 2016 stipulating the rates, collection, remittance, management and use of intellectual property charges and fees.

2. Conditions for industrial design protection

The definition of industrial design is defined in Clause 3, Article 4 of the Law on Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Intellectual Property Law Law No. 36/2009/QH12:

Industrial design is the outside appearance of the product represented by shapes, lines, colors or combinations of these elements.

So, Industrial designs that want to be protected must meet the following conditions:

• Novelty;
• Creativity;
• Industrial Applicability;

However, the following subjects are not protected as industrial designs:

• The appearance of the product due to the technical properties of the product is required;
• The appearance of civil or industrial construction works;
• The shape of the product is not visible during the use of the product;

2. Requisite documents:

• Application form;
• Specifications (01 set);
• Photos/drawings (04 sets);
• Related documents;
• Power of Attorney (following our form).

3. Time frame:

• Formality examination: 01 month from the filing date;
• Publication date: 02 months from the date of formality acceptance ;
• Substantive examination within around 07 months from the publication date.