The infographic of 2017 Overall Scores (Source: VNA)Thereport, released for the fifth consecutive year, ranks the United States firstand Venezuela last.
Itslatest ranking puts Vietnam ahead of countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan,India and Egypt, but behind the Philippines. It also marks an approximatelyfour percent increase in its overall score to 30 percent (10.34 out of 35) from26 percent (7.83 out of 30) last year.
“Thisyear’s index, namely ‘The Roots of Innovation’, recognises the indispensablerole of intellectual property (IP) in facilitating innovative and creativeactivity on a socially transformative scale,” said Patrick Kilbride, ExecutiveDirector for the Global Intellectual Property Center, at the launch of VietnamIP Index by AmCham in Hanoi on February 17.
The2017 Index benchmarks the IP standards in 45 global economies, representingroughly 90 percent of global GDP, Kilbride said, adding that economies arescored against six categories of IP protection: patents; copyrights;trademarks; trade secrets; market access; and enforcement and ratification ofinternational treaties.
ThomasTreutler, Chairman of Amcham’s IT, Telecom and IPR Committee, said the increasein Vietnam’s score this year can be attributed to the country signing the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) deal and improvements in industrial design protectionand the ability to commercialise IP protection.
“Overthe last few years, Vietnam has shown strong improvement in the IP sector. Themarket management authorities and the police seem to be much more active, asevidenced by the fact that hundreds of thousands of counterfeit goods wereseized last year,” Treutler said.
Headded that in many cases, the operation of businesses producing counterfeitgoods had been suspended, which showed the government’s efforts to protect theIP rights of the honest enterprises.
However,although 2016 saw greater government focus on IP, overall efforts remainlimited relative to the scale of the challenges, and tend to occur on acase-by-case basis rather than on a large scale, Truetler said.
Accordingto this year’s report, Vietnam’s improvements in the IP sector include puttinga basic IP framework in place, particularly for trademark protection, betterprotection of domain names and action against confusingly similar marks fordissimilar goods.
Thereport also mentioned some limitations, like inadequate protection of lifesciences patents, challenging enforcement environment, gaps in copyrightprotection, including lack of measures to address online infringements and veryhigh physical counterfeiting rates and rampant online infringement.
Enforcementis still poor, insufficient penalties are levied and administrative inactionstill occurs, according to the report.
TheGlobal Intellectual Property Center says it works around the world to championintellectual property rights as vital to creating jobs, advancing globaleconomic growth, and generating breakthrough solutions to global challenges.
TheUS Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representingthe interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, andregions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. — VNA
VNA
