The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Perspectives of the Vietnamese Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time. The WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), negotiated in the 1986-94 Uruguay Round, introduced intellectual property rules into the multilateral trading system for the first time. Vietnam became the 150th member of the WTO since January 11, 2007. As Viet Nam stated in the TRIPS Council in 2008, the Civil Code of 1995, which introduced the basic principles of property, including intellectual property, was the fundamental text representing a turning point in Vietnamese efforts to become a market economy. The Civil Code was revised in 2005 by Law No. 33/2005/QH11, re-stipulating the basic civil principles of intellectual property rights. The Civil Code is the basis on which the whole universe of IPRs is regulated by IP legislation in Viet Nam. The Law on Intellectual Property (Law No. 50/2005/QH11 of 29 November 2005) was amended and supplemented in 2009 (Law No. 36/2009/QH12). This Law covers comprehensively the full range of full IPRs. Implementing provisions are generally regulated by decrees and circulars. Research of national legislation allows us to understand the integration of this Agreement in the domestic system. But it still requires a more effective regulatory system by doing research on legal problems.