Abstract
Four major challenges face Vietnam’s higher education system in the area of intellectual property (IP). These challenges are significant because, more than ever before, Vietnamese academics are generating copyrighted writings, textbooks, and teaching-related software; potentially patentable inventions, medicines, and processes; and other valuable materials. The challenges are the following: (1) the need to develop, among faculty and students, a greater understanding of economic and moral IP rights in academic research; (2) the need to expand the teaching of IP, both in the general university curriculum and in pre-professional programs; (3) confusion over the ownership of IP rights within Vietnamese universities; and (4) the need for institutions to enhance their internal business capacity to commercialize faculty-created IP by means of technology licensing offices or similar means. The chapter concludes that faculty-generated IP can play a significant role in furthering autonomy and decentralization in Vietnam’s universities by rewarding individual and institutional initiative with economic benefits. Moreover, to the extent that faculty inventions can be commercialized and tested by the rigors of the marketplace, IP can provide a form of quality assurance within universities that is concrete and measurable.
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Notes
- 1.
Vietnam’s Intellectual Property Law, effective as of July 1, 2006, protects many of types of works that might be created by university faculty. Other IP rights, such as those in new plant varieties, semiconductor chips, and trade secrets, are provided for by government decree.
- 2.
Interview with Dr. Nguyêń Thanh Hā, professor of economics and manager of the Center for Business Management at National Economics University in Hanoi, December 2005.
- 3.
See Vietnam’s Civil Code, Article 738, and IP Law, Article 19. In October 2004, Vietnam became a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Article 6bis of which prohibits “derogatory action” in relation to a work which “would be prejudicial to [an author’s] honor or reputation.”
- 4.
IP Law, Article 207(1)(b).
- 5.
Work-for-hire rules provide that the owner of IP is not the individual who creates it, but rather the employer, governmental body, or commissioning party for which the IP was created. See Civil Code, Article 740.
- 6.
See Decree no. 11/2005/ND/CP of February 2, 2005 (replacing Decree no. 45/1998/ND/CP of July 1, 1998).
- 7.
See, for example, Decree no. 61/ND-CP of June 11, 2002 of the Government on Royalty Regime (copyrighted works).
- 8.
For example, Stanford University inventors receive one-third of net royalties from their licensed discoveries after administrative costs are deducted. See Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing, “Our Process,” Section 8 (found at http://www.otl.stanford.edu/inventors/process.html (last visited October 13, 2007). In an interview conducted on December 15, 2005, Mr. Bay, Vice Director of Education and Research at Vietnam’s Patent Bureau, stated that the Department of Sciences and Technology had recently recommended that academic inventors receive 70% of royalties generated by their discoveries. In contrast, Professor Lam Quang Thiep of Vietnam National University in Hanoi, during an interview on December 9, 2005, stated that Vietnamese academic authors receive 10% of net revenues from sales of their books. This smaller percentage is generally consistent, however, with royalty percentages paid by book publishers to academic authors in many developed countries.
- 9.
See materials at:http://www.ecap-project.org/activitiesevents/at_regional_level/eu_asean_colloquium_on_a_common_postgraduate_ip_curriculum_and_syllabi_template_for_asean_countries_17_18_august_2005_singapore.html (last visited October 27, 2007).
- 10.
There exists a wide range of conflicting views about the ownership of IP in Vietnamese universities. Officials interviewed at Vietnam National University (VNU) in Hanoi in December 2005 believed that patent rights are owned by, and registered in the name of, VNU inventors. Yet a Patent Bureau official stated in the same month that patents created at public universities are usually owned by the universities, and that non-public universities typically settle this question by contract. During an interview in December 2005, Dr. Nguyn Minh H, Vice General Director of the Polytechnology Company at Hanoi University of Technology, stated that when funding for research comes from the university or the state, ownership of IP resides both in the university/state and in the individual author. The apparent inconsistencies here may result from conflicting assumptions about what IP “ownership” is. For some interviewees, “ownership” seemed to relate to the moral rights in a work, as opposed to the economic rights.
- 11.
Decree no. 11/2005/ND/CP of February 2, 2005.
- 12.
See Oxford University, “Knowledge Transfer” (2005), found at http://www.ox.ac.uk/innovation/spin.shtml (last visited October 13, 2007).
- 13.
See Stanford University Technology Licensing Office, “What We Do,” found at www. http://otl.stanford.edu/flash.html (last visited October 13, 2007).
- 14.
This information was obtained during interviews with Dr. Nguyn Minh H, Vice General Director of the Company, and Mr. Bay of the Patent Bureau, in December 2005.
References
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Spoo, R., Tuan, D.A. (2010). Intellectual Property and Vietnam’s Higher Education System. In: Harman, G., Hayden, M., Nghi, P.T. (eds) Reforming Higher Education in Vietnam. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3694-0_8
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