Vietnamese enterprises are being called upon to cooperate with authorities to take on the increasing amound of counterfiet goods.
 |
| Police carried out a raid on a shop selling illegal DVDs in September in southern Binh Duong Province. Photo by Binh Duong Newspaper. |
The call was made by leaders from the Vietnam Association for Anti-counterfeiting and Trademark Protection (VATAP), the Department for Anti-trafficking under the Vietnamese Customs Department, and the Market Management Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade at the 3rd anniversary of the “Vietnam Anti-counterfeit Goods Day November 29,” held in Hanoi on November 26.
At the event, chairman of VATAP, Le The Bao, announced that a recent survey on the Hanoi market showed that various kinds of the goods were found infringing on intellectual property rights including beverage, cosmetics, foods, medicine and more.
“Following instructions issued July 12 by the Prime Minister, we have to urgently crack-down on violations over the goods that impact health and environment such as medicine, cosmetics, food, motorbikes and gas,” he said.
“VATAP is calling on businesses to actively cooperate with concerned agencies to prevent illegal trafficking of fake goods from foreign countries to Vietnam.”
According to Nguyen Phi Hung, deputy head of the Department for Anti-trafficking under the Vietnamese Customs Department, intellectual property rights infringement and the manufacture and sale of counterfeit goods are increasingly common in Vietnam nowadays, which involve more kinds of goods using more sophisticated methods.
“Piracy is seen in almost all kinds of goods,” Hung said. “Counterfeit products are mostly from China which is home to the biggest counterfeit and piracy market in the world. As Vietnam has a very long border with China, our anti-trafficking teams face a lot of obstacles.”
He added that to better fight counterfeiting, relevant agencies and enterprises need closer cooperation.
“We will have to be able to prevent possible violations, not just discover and punish them,” Hung said. “And I hope that more and more enterprises will register intellectual property rights for their products so as to prevent violations.”
As vice chairman of the steering committee for fighting the counterfeiting of goods and intellectual property rights infringement, Vice-Minister of Industry and Trade, Nguyen Cam Tu revealed that over the past 10 years, they have tackled 212,427 cases seizing goods valued at over VND103 billion (USD5.15 million).
“These numbers are still very minor compared to the real situation,” Tu said. “We will apply stronger measures in the coming time following the recent instructions from the Prime Minister.”
On behalf of the committee, he called upon local enterprises to cooperate more closely with them and also called on domestic consumers to jointly fight fake goods.
At the event, VATAP signed an agreement on the “Anti-Counterfeiting Programme” with the Department for anti-trafficking and the steering committee for fighting goods counterfeiting and intellectual property rights infringement under the ministry of Industry and Trade.
