Trademark registration in Vietnam

No. The enterprise name on your ERC only stops someone from registering an identical company name; it gives no trademark rights. Your brand needs its own IP Vietnam registration, and until it has one, anyone can file for it, including your manufacturing partner.

The honest answer has two parts. The law in force since 1 April 2026 sets a statutory path of roughly eight months: formality in a month, publication a month later, a three-month opposition window, and substantive examination within five months of publication, with a fast track near three months for qualifying marks. In practice IP Vietnam is still clearing a long backlog, so plan twelve to eighteen months and treat anything faster as the new rules working. Protection runs from the filing date either way, which is the reason to file now rather than when the queue looks shorter.

Official fees come to roughly VND 1.5 million per class through to grant for a standard specification, with each class covering up to six items and extra items adding fees. Our fee covers the search, the filing through a licensed agent, and the prosecution to certificate, quoted per class; contested matters are quoted as they arise. Schedule a call with your mark and product list and we'll give you the exact figure.

It depends where their filing stands. If it's within three months of publication, we oppose. If it's registered, the routes are an invalidation request (within five years of grant, or at any time where the filing was in bad faith) or a termination request once the mark has sat unused for five consecutive years. Negotiated purchase and coexistence are also real options, and sometimes the cheapest ones. We assess which fits before you spend on any of them.

Foreign applicants without a commercial presence in Vietnam are required to file through a licensed Vietnamese IP agent; it's a statutory rule, not a preference. Our service includes the agent, the power of attorney that appoints them (simply signed, no notarization), and a local address for correspondence, so official notices reach people who act on them inside the deadlines.

The international system that groups all goods and services into 45 classes. Your registration protects the mark in the classes you file, with fees per class and per item beyond six. Multi-class applications are allowed, with one practical caution: a problem in one class holds up the entire application, so where one class looks risky, we often file it separately and let the clean classes run.

They have three months from publication under the new law. Oppositions are uncommon in Vietnam, under five percent of applications, but they are serious when they come: the defense runs in Vietnamese, on strict deadlines, with the examiner deciding on both sides' arguments. We prepare the response and tell you honestly when a coexistence deal is the better outcome.

There are no periodic use declarations in Vietnam. The use rule bites differently: a mark unused for five consecutive years can be terminated on request, so the protection is only as strong as your evidence of use. We keep dated proof (sales records, listings, packaging, campaigns) with the file, so a termination claim meets a wall instead of a gap.

Yes; Vietnam is a member of both the Madrid Agreement and the Protocol, so you can designate it in an international application. IP Vietnam examines the designation under the same rules, and a provisional refusal still needs a licensed local agent to answer it, with the WIPO channel adding weeks to every exchange. For a Vietnam-only filing, the national route is usually faster and more controllable; for a multi-country program, Madrid with local support works well.

The registration renews every ten years, counted from the filing date. The renewal files within the six months before expiry, with a short grace period after it at a surcharge; miss both and the mark lapses, and in a first-to-file system someone may be waiting for exactly that. We calendar yours the day the certificate issues.