ELITE Law Firm: Procedures for registration of trademark protection at the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (NOIP) according to regulations need to go through several steps, including filing application, formal examination, publishing in the Official Gazette, substantive examination, notifying issue a decision on grant of a protected title, pay the granting fee if granted and the NOIP issues a Certificate of Trademark Registration for a trademark registration application that meets the protection requirements. Accordingly, the total time to register a trademark in Vietnam is within 13 months.
However, this term may be extended because the application is denied in form or substance (not fundamentally different from the trademarks being protected) or due to overcrowding of applications. In our experience, to shorten the time for trademark registration at the NOIP, customers should conduct a thorough search and assess the protectability of the trademarks before applying for registration, and application dossiers need to be completed under the prescribed form.
ELITE Law Firm: Currently, the provisions on trademark protection of Vietnam IP law as well as the guiding documents do not have specific provisions on the scope of protection of black and white and color trademarks.
When registering for color trademark protection, the trademark will be protected by both the content and the color of the trademark. The owner can only use the trademark in the form of the registered color, if the color is not correct, it will violate the regulations on the use of the trademark. Trademarks registered for protection in the form of black and white are only protected for images and text, but not for colors. However, the practice of trademark protection in Vietnam allows a trademark registered in black and white to be used in different colors, as long as the text and image contents of the trademark are preserved and do not infringe the rights of a registered trademark.
ELITE LAW FIRM: Under current regulations, the trademark owner can modify a trademark application, however, such modification must not expand the scope of protection of the trademark. In case the trademark owner wants to add a new class of goods/services to your registered trademark application, he/she needs to proceed with the filing of another trademark application for the new class of goods/services with the same procedure as with the already filed trademark application.
