Taiwanese Companies in Vietnam Pay Attention to IP Laws

The Copyright Office of Vietnam (COV), Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Taiwan Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam on March 10 met face-to-face with hundreds of Taiwanese companies doing business in Vietnam in a workshop on “Better Competitiveness through Compliance with Vietnam IP laws and related legislations”.

 

The workshop provides the latest updates on laws and regulations pertaining to software ownership in Vietnam to Taiwanese companies with business interests in Vietnam to help them avoid any conflicts with the law that may occur out of lack of awareness.

 

The Baker & McKenzie law office also updated on Washington Congress’s July 22, 2011 endorsement of a new act called “Infringement of intellectual property ownership in information technology”, addressing unhealthy competition, specifically use of unlicensed software. The act requires that all manufacturing businesses having products on sales in the state of Washington must have documented evidence that they have been using licensed software for the purposes of their business activities. Later, BSA, its members, namely Lac Viet Computing Cor., Bkis, PCT and Microsoft, and Open Computing Alliance and Lac Viet also advised on effective software ownership solutions to Taiwanese companies doing business in Vietnam.

 

Dr. Vu Manh Chu, Director General of the Vietnam Copyright Office, addressed that the use of illegal software by businesses may be subject to criminal charges and severe punishment by the law. Added to that, copyright owners are also entitled to other means to address infringements of their intellectual property rights.

 

Mr. Dao Anh Tuan, Representative of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) informed that APAC recorded a software piracy rate of 60% (2010) as reported in the IDC Global Software Piracy Study. This translates into a commercial value of US$18.7 billion in pirated software used.