“When a trademark becomes famous and valuable, it will immediately face with unhealthy competition and intellectual property right violation on brand name, cover and product appearance. This has become more and more popular in the world-joining time but how to deal with this problem is still a very difficult question..."  the Vietnam Intellectual Property Department representative, Mr. Luu Duc Thanh.

From 2003 to late 2006, there was lot of information accusing Cadi-Sun, a product of Thuong Dinh Electrical Wire and Cable Co., Ltd (located in Hanoi), of counterfeiting Cadivi, a product of Vietnam electric wire and cable corp. (located in HCM City).

Meanwhile, according to Cadi-Sun, its trademark and logo have been protected with the certificate number 40771/QÐ-ÐK issued by intellectual property department in 2002.

The company also revealed that by the time of the incident, its products had appeared in many major projects such as Rural Power Project 1 (by Power Company number 1), Rural project 2 Ha Tinh, Dung Quat industrial zone project and so on.

In the press conference on May 31st in Hanoi, Mr. Pham Luong Hoa- Cadi-Sun General Director said that the above wrong information had had great effects on the company’s prestige and image. He said, “We haven’t counted the financial and economic losses but at that time, our prestige was affected so badly that we were suspected everywhere by our partners and customers because they were afraid that our products were fakes of Cadivi.”

Up to now, some units who issued the incorrect information have apologized Cadi-Sun and corrected the information. In addition, Cadi-Sun and Cadivi talked to each other as two members of Vietnam Power Association about the incident.

According to Mr. Hoa, the regret is the “fight” between two domestic brands while “family members should cooperate hand in hand to develop and compete with overseas products.”

Increasing violation, overlapping law…

Lawyer Le Xuan Thao, vice-president of Hanoi Lawyer Delegation, said Cadi-Sun and Cadivi’s case was only one of the many cases related to intellectual property right violation which has become popular since Vietnam’s WTO accession.

Mr. Thao said each month, his intellectual property representative company receives more than ten asks for help from enterprises whose products are imitated illegally or which are spoken bad or mentioned incorrectly.

According to Mr. Thao, the increase results from Vietnam’s WTO accession which leads to fast development in importing and exporting and fake products from overseas. The long border stretching from North to South is also a good environment for fake products to tap into the country.

He also analyzes that even though the law on intellectual property right was put into effect in July, 2006 there are still many difficulties for authorities to implement.

“First, the counterfeit warning regime under the new law lengthens the settlement duration. It is obligatory to warn first and only when the faults are admitted, are authorities able to tackle. When the violation is obvious, the fact that authorities wait for “volunteer” admitting his faults is unacceptable.

Second, according to the regulation since October 2006 Intellectual property right Department has not made any violation check while this activity has not been taken on by anyone else. The authorities are not willing because they do not want to play and blow the whistle at the same time. Settlement is assigned from one to another making most of the cases unsolved,” said Mr. Thao.

In fact, violation confirmation is made by intellectual property representative companies. As a consequence, they are responsible under the law for finding faults, which laying the ground for the authorities to jump in. With fast developing speed, however, the number of company like this in Vietnam may reach thousand which raised Mr. Thao’s concern about unhomogeneous professional skills and quality of those companies.

Mr. Luu Duc Thanh admits that “Solving the violation method is now a difficult exercise to which every country is facing.” He also sees that, “to prevent the violation from occurring, enterprises should actively assert their products, introduce and market themselves widely in line with pushing the introduction of the law on intellectual property right to the public…”