Patents, utility solutions and industrial designs: what can be protected, PCT and Hague entry, the 2026 examination timetable and fast-track, grace periods, employee inventions and remuneration, security control on filing abroad, and trade secrets

Three forms of protection

Vietnamese law offers three registered rights for technical and design innovation, all granted by the Intellectual Property Office of Viet Nam (IP Viet Nam) under Law No. 50/2005/QH11 on Intellectual Property, as amended most recently by Law No. 131/2025/QH15 from 1 April 2026 (FAQ 84). An invention patent (bằng độc quyền sáng chế) protects a technical solution, product or process, that is new worldwide, involves an inventive step and is industrially applicable (Article 58). It lasts 20 years from the filing date, subject to annual maintenance fees. A utility solution patent (bằng độc quyền giải pháp hữu ích) protects a technical solution that is new and industrially applicable but need not show an inventive step, provided it is not common knowledge; it lasts ten years from filing and suits incremental improvements to products with short commercial lives. An industrial design registration protects the external appearance of a product. It lasts five years from filing and may be renewed twice, for a maximum of 15 years.

Excluded from patent protection are, among other things, discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental acts, business methods, computer programs as such, presentations of information, aesthetic creations, plant and animal varieties, essentially biological processes, and methods of diagnosis and treatment of humans and animals (Article 59). Software-related inventions can be patented where they produce a technical effect, but the program itself is protected by copyright (Copyright, software and AI). Law No. 131/2025/QH15 widened the design definition to cover the appearance of the whole or part of a product, in physical or non-physical form, so partial designs and digital designs such as graphical user interfaces can now be registered, and making a protected part, or circulating digital copies of a protected non-physical design, may infringe.

Novelty, grace periods and priority

Novelty is absolute: an invention is not new if it has been disclosed anywhere in the world, by use, publication or any other means, before the filing or priority date. The law gives a limited safety net. An invention is not treated as having lost novelty if it was disclosed by the person entitled to register it, or by someone who obtained the information from that person, within 12 months before filing (Article 60(3)), a period extended from six months by the 2022 amendments. Industrial designs have a six-month grace period (Article 65(3)), and Law No. 131/2025/QH15 adds that a design keeps its novelty despite unlawful or unauthorised publication. The grace period is a defence, not a strategy: other countries apply different rules, and disclosure before filing can destroy protection elsewhere.

A foreign applicant can claim Paris Convention priority from its first filing for 12 months for inventions and utility solutions and six months for industrial designs. Under the Patent Cooperation Treaty it can file one international application and enter the Vietnamese national phase within 31 months of the priority date by filing the request form, a Vietnamese translation of the description and abstract and, where applicable, a power of attorney (Circular No. 10/2026/TT-BKHCN) (FAQ 85). Vietnam is also party to the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement, so an international design registration can designate Vietnam; IP Viet Nam examines the designation and may refuse protection within the Hague period. As with trademarks, an applicant without a residence or business establishment in Vietnam must act through a licensed industrial property representative for national filings and for responses to IP Viet Nam (Article 89).

Examination after the 2025 amendments

Every application undergoes formality examination, publication and substantive examination. A patent application is published in the 19th month from the filing or priority date, or earlier on request, and a PCT national phase application one month after formal acceptance. Unlike a trademark, an invention is examined on substance only if someone requests it. Law No. 131/2025/QH15 shortened the deadline for the request to 36 months from the filing or priority date, from 42; if no request is filed in time the application is deemed withdrawn. Substantive examination must then be completed within 12 months of publication or of the request, whichever is later, instead of 18. Third parties may oppose a patent application within six months of publication. Industrial design applications are published within one month of formal acceptance, may be opposed within three months, previously four, and must be examined within five months of publication, previously seven.

New Article 119(2a) allows fast-track substantive examination of invention applications, completed within three months, in cases prescribed by the Government; the opposition period for a fast-tracked patent application falls to three months. Circular No. 10/2026/TT-BKHCN confines fast-track to inventions on the list of strategic technologies and strategic technology products under the high-technology law and inventions researched and exploited for emergencies relating to security, defence, natural disasters and epidemics, and prescribes a separate request form and fee. The amended law also requires each application to claim only one title for one subject matter, replaces the fixed list of application documents with a principle-based requirement detailed by decree, and allows a title obtained by fraud or false information to be revoked. Where artificial intelligence was used in creating the subject matter, applicants should disclose it accurately; the Government is to regulate how rights arise in AI-assisted creations, and human creative contribution remains the basis of protection.

Patents are maintained by annual fees from the year of grant, payable in advance; a missed annuity can be paid with a surcharge within six months, after which the patent lapses. A granted patent may be subject to a compulsory licence in the public interest, for non-working without a legitimate reason, or for anti-competitive conduct (Article 145), a risk that matters chiefly in pharmaceuticals.

How a foreign applicant protects an invention in Vietnam through the PCT

1. File the priority application and the PCT applicationFile at home, then file the PCT application within 12 months, before any public disclosure where possible. Note the 31-month deadline for Vietnam from the earliest priority date.
2. Decide on Vietnam well before month 31Review the international search report and the commercial case for Vietnam: manufacturing there, competitors there, or a significant market. Consider whether a utility solution would give enough protection for an incremental improvement.
3. Instruct a licensed industrial property representativeProvide the PCT publication, any Article 19 or Article 34 amendments, the applicant's details and a power of attorney. Arrange a Vietnamese translation of the description, claims and abstract; translation quality decides the scope of the granted claims.
4. Enter the national phase by month 31File the request form and translation with IP Viet Nam and pay the fees. Consider filing the request for substantive examination at the same time; the outer limit is now 36 months from priority.
5. Consider fast-trackIf the invention falls within the strategic technology list or an emergency category, request fast-track examination on the prescribed form with evidence.
6. Respond to examination reportsAnswer substantive examination reports within the periods set, amending claims where needed. Results from the EPO, USPTO, JPO or other offices often support the arguments.
7. Grant, annuities and recordalsPay the grant fee and the first annuity, diarise annual fees, and record any licence to the Vietnamese subsidiary or licensee with IP Viet Nam; register an inbound technology transfer where the licence carries technology.

Employee inventions and remuneration

The right to register an invention, utility solution or design belongs to the organisation or individual that invested the funds and material facilities for its creation by assigning a task to the author or hiring the author, unless the parties agree otherwise (Article 86). A Vietnamese subsidiary therefore owns, by default, the inventions of its research staff made in the course of their duties, and a foreign parent that wants to own them must take an assignment from the subsidiary, which may itself be a transfer of industrial property rights and, if the technology goes abroad, an outbound technology transfer requiring registration (Technology transfer and licensing).

The inventor keeps a statutory right to remuneration. Unless the parties agree otherwise, the owner must pay the author at least 10% of the profit it earns from using the invention, utility solution or design and 15% of each payment it receives from licensing it (Article 135). The minimum applies where there is no agreement, so an employment contract or research policy should set the remuneration expressly and record that it has been agreed. The author also has moral rights to be named as inventor in the patent and in publications. Remuneration and the allocation of rights for inventions arising from State-funded research are governed by Law No. 93/2025/QH15 on Science, Technology and Innovation and do not normally concern private investors.

Security control before filing abroad

Article 89a of the IP Law, introduced in 2022 and revised by Law No. 131/2025/QH15, applies a security-control rule to inventions that are created in Vietnam, owned by Vietnamese organisations or individuals, and fall within technical fields that affect national defence and security. Such an invention may be filed abroad only after it has cleared security control in Vietnam, and a PCT application of Vietnamese origin filed through IP Viet Nam is checked against the rule before it is transmitted to WIPO; Decree No. 65/2023/ND-CP, as amended, sets out the fields and the procedure.

The rule matters to foreign investors more than its wording suggests. A Vietnamese subsidiary of a foreign group is a Vietnamese organisation, and a research and development centre in Vietnam that invents in a covered field, such as certain areas of telecommunications, encryption, aerospace, energy or advanced materials, may find that its parent cannot simply file the first application at home. A group with research activity in Vietnam should check each invention against the decree's list before deciding where to file first, and should provide in its intra-group agreements for the security-control step and for the subsequent assignment of rights.

Trade secrets

Much valuable technology is never patented. A trade secret, information obtained from financial or intellectual investment that is not common knowledge, gives its holder an advantage, and is kept secret by necessary measures, is protected without registration for as long as those conditions continue (Article 84), unless it falls within the exclusions in Article 85, such as personal identity secrets and State secrets. Infringement includes accessing or collecting the secret by defeating security measures, disclosing or using it without permission, breaching a confidentiality agreement, and inducing another to breach one (Article 127).

Protection depends on the holder proving that it took reasonable steps to keep the information secret, so the evidence must exist before any dispute: written confidentiality agreements with employees, contractors and partners; access controls and marking of documents; exit procedures; and records of who received what. The Labour Code allows an employer and employee to agree in writing on the protection of business and technology secrets and on compensation for breach (Article 21, Law No. 45/2019/QH14), and an agreement made at the start of employment is easier to enforce than one imposed later (Employment contracts and probation). Non-compete clauses have an uncertain status in Vietnamese labour law and should not be relied on as the main protection.