The collection rates, regime of collection, payment, management and use of industrial property fees and charges

The Ministry of Finance promulgated new Circular providing for the collection rates, regime of collection, payment, management and use of industrial property fees and charges.

On November 14, 2016, the Ministry of Finance promulgated Circular No. 263/2016/TT- BTC (“Circular 263”) providing for the collection rates, regime of collection, payment, management and use of industrial property fees and charges.

Circular 263 introduces a major adjustment in the regime of management and use of fees and charges in comparison with Circular No 22/2009/TT-BTC. Specifically, fee collectors shall transfer the whole amount of collected charges and 15% of the whole amount of collected fees to the State budget. The remaining 85% of the whole amount of collected fees is retained by the fee collector in order to pay the costs for performing works and services with regard to industrial property rights; whereas under Circular 22, 65% of the whole amount of collected fees and charges is transferred to the State budget and the remaining 35% retained by the fee collectors.

Professional fees under this Circular are more expensive for almost all works including filing applications, examination, renewal, annuity, request for appeal, opposition, cancellation or invalidation.

Some kind of fees are changed totally in the calculation, such as fee rates for preliminary examination of patent application which equals to 20% of total application examination fee. Another example is that instead of a single charge for maintenance/renewal of titles as stipulated in Circular 22 according to new Circular 263, NOIP will split it into 3 kinds of fees and charges: charges for validity maintenance/renewal, fees for examination of maintenance/ renewal requests, and fees for use of titles, resulting in remarkable increase of costs compared with the previous ones. Specifically, renewal fee associated with trademark certificate for the first class of goods/ services would jump from VND 660,000 to VND 1,080,000, and 1st annuity fee of patent for the first independent claim would jump from and VND 300,000 to VND 560,000.

Especially, some fees previously specified in Circular 22 (such as fees for accelerated examination, request for decision on compulsory transfer, verification, request for providing information, issuing kinds of copies, duplicates, re-issues, industrial property documents, sending international application, certification of priority right, etc.) but not mentioned in the New Circular 263 will be changed to service payment regime. The Circular is also providing that fee on late national entry or late request for substantive examination is not collected anymore and no paid fees and charges are refundable.

This Circular takes effect from the date of 01/01/2017.