Facing these remarkable results, Science and Development had an interview with Mr. Phan Ngan Son - Deputy Director of Intellectual Property Department, Ministry of Science and Technology.

Sir, although the number of patent applications of Vietnam in 2020 increased significantly compared to 2019, but looked at the list of patents and utility solutions announced by the Department every month. It is easy to see Vietnamese subjects also account for a modest percentage compared to foreign subjects. Do you have any comment on this situation?

For foreign objects, when there is a demand for, investment prospect in production, business or technology transfer in a certain market, their first concern is intellectual property rights. Countries with many patent applications filed in Vietnam in the last 10 years are Japan, China, Korea, the United States and some European countries. However, we also see that the number of patent / utility solution applications by Vietnamese applicants is not high compared to the total number of applications registered in Vietnam. Some of the reasons for this situation are that in Vietnam, demand for inventions is not high; research capacity is still low; the enterprise's ability to absorb inventions is still limited; The incentive mechanism to create inventions in enterprises, institutes and schools is not really effective. Because of the lack of awareness of intellectual property rights, inventors neglected the process of patent registration for their technology, leading to when commercialization fell into a situation of not benefiting from intellectual property rights that they should be well-deserved.

In the coming time, the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam will focus on implementing the Prime Minister's Decision No. 2205 approving the Intellectual Property Development Program up to 2030 (the Program) with a view to fundamental innovation approach compared to the period of 2011-2020  in order to contribute to making intellectual property really an important tool to improve national competitiveness, promote economic, cultural and social development. The Program's goal in the period of 2021-2030 is to be larger, with more new content than in the previous period, to ensure full support of content from creating intellectual property and establishing property rights of intellectual property rights protection, management, exploitation and development of intellectual property, and creation of intellectual property culture; promote innovation activities and encourage enterprises to actively place orders, associate and cooperate with research institutes and universities to exploit and develop intellectual property, and shorten the application process of research results into production and business, practically serving socio-economic development goals.