Preferential Policies When Investing in DaNang Hi-Tech Park

Danang has been growing to become attractive destination for investment due to favourable conditions offered by the city administration to bring foreign investor investing into hi-tech park.

Benefits of Investors in Setting up a Business in Da Nang

Danang is one of the five large cities of Vietnam and is the key economic hub of Central Vietnam. The location of Danang is one of the important gateway to the sea of the Central Highlands and Laos, Cambodia and Thailand to the Northeast Asia countries through the East-West Economic Corridor, and located in one of the international sea routes and air routes. Danang has a geographic location that is particularly conducive to rapid and sustainable development.

Danang Hi-tech Park was established in accordance with Decision No.1979/QD-TTg dated October 28th2010, after two Hi-tech Parks in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with the hope of developing the science and technology of Da Nang, the Central Region and Central Highlands of Vietnam. Covering an area of 1,129.76 hectares and the infrastructure is gradually being completed with production areas, research and development, training and nursery enterprises, administrative management, housing, logistics, logistics and high- tech services. Da Nang Hi-tech Park is expected to be the attractive place where domestic and foreign investors favourable infrastructure and incentives. Danang Hi-tech Park shall give priority to the setting up of company in high-tech areas i.e. bio-technology for agriculture, fisheries and health; microelectronics, mechatronics and optoelectronics, automation and precision engineering; information technology, communication, informatics software; petrochemical service technology. Danang is a priority city for the development of environmentally friendly industries and services, therefore investors will not be allowed to trade in industries that threaten to pollute the environment and affect national security or industries using obsolete technologies.

In addition to the infrastructure development, Danang also offers investment incentives to attract domestic and foreign investors to invest in Danang Hi-tech Park such as Decision No. 36/2013/QD-UBND and most recently Decree No. 04/2018/ND-CP will take effect from February. Decree No. 04/2018/ND-CP has given great investment incentives to investors when investing in Danang Hi-tech park. Having policies to attract domestic investment and FDI, whereby investors invest in Danang Hi-tech Park will be exempted from all or part of land rent and site clearance in some specific cases. In addition, when investing in Danang Hi-tech Park, the enterprises will be entitled to corporate income tax incentives for 15 to 30 years and exemption on corporate income tax for 4 years, and reduction of 50% for 9 years later to enterprise having new investment projects. Goods imported to be fixed assets in Hi-tech Park or machinery and equipment which cannot be produced at domestic will be exempted from import tax. In addition, experts and workers who are foreigners/overseas Vietnamese working in Hi-tech park and their family members may be considered for issuance of multiple entry and exit visas with appropriate time limits for entry purposes in accordance with the laws.

The economics of Danang is growing and the special incentives have been offered to attract investment from the city administration. This is the opportunities for investors both domestic and foreigners to invest in Danang.

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The Government Continues to Exempt Visas for Western European Countries

It has been announced on May 3^rd, 2018 that visa exemption policy for 5 Western European countries has been extended as part of the Vietnam immigration policy to attract tourists to Vietnam. At the same time, the Government has decided to increase the exemption period from one year to three years.

Immigration lawyers in Vietnam

Accordingly, the Government has a high consensus and the Prime Minister has decided to continue the visa exemption for five Western European countries, including England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. As previous regulation, the visa exemption will be expired at the end of June 2018. The exemption period has also increased from one year to three years.

Visa policy is considered to be an extension of the tourism industry because Vietnam is a country has strict visa policies, with only visa exemption for citizens of 24 countries, much less than other countries in the region.

For example, Indonesia exempts visas from 168 countries, Malaysia 162 countries, Singapore or the Philippines 159 countries, Thailand 57 countries. Besides that, these countries apply the policy of issuing visas at the border and electronic visas.

Western Europe is considered a high-paying group. Statistics show that the first visa exemption year (2015) has 720 thousand guests. In 2016, the number of visitors increased 16%, turnover reached 202 million.

In 2017, Western European visitors reached 1.5 million people, contributing to the record of the first-time Vietnam reaching 12.9 million international visitors.

According to many experts, if visas for these countries are not renewed, tourism industry of Vietnam will lose 20% of its visitors from large markets with a loss of several hundred million USD. However, losses will not stop there, as guests may form a habit of not coming to Vietnam.

This new immigration regulation will start from July 1^st, 2018.

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Can acronyms get trademark protection?

Absolutely. Just go to  http://uspto.gov and do a trademark search for "BMW" using the TESS system and you'll see they've got numerous marks registered. The same could be done for many other acronyms: CNN, NBC, JVC, you name it -- provided they're being used as trademarks (i.e., as a designation of the unique source of products or services).

Trademark protection in Vietnam

First, abbreviations can be registered just like any other trademark, provided:

(i) they are not descriptive of the goods for which they are used;

(ii) they have some significance of their own;

For example, the mark BMW does not in any way describe that the underlying good is a car, as also, the significance of it is that, it stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke. However, even without registration, you can claim rights in an abbreviation, provided you can prove that the general population recognizes the abbreviation as atra source of the goods you provide. For example, people recognized FedEx for Federal Express, Coke for Coca-cola and so on.

Second, domain names are fully within the purview of trademark law, as well. This means that if a trademark owner can prove that a registered domain name is confusingly similar to the mark in which the owner claims rights, then he has a good case against the owner of that domain. However, going to the court is always an expensive ordeal, for which reason, the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was adopted, which gives owners of REGISTERED marks to file a complaint with Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers (ICANN) and have the infringing domain either cancelled or transferred back to the trademark owner. The latter process is very popular amongst corporations, it being more efficient and less expensive. However, the owner of the mark must prove the following in order to have either of the remedies:

 (i) that the domain name is confusingly similar to the registered mark;

 (ii) that the domain owner has no legitimate rights in the domain name;

 (iii) that the domain has been registered or used in bad faith.

 For example, if you registerwww.biemw.com, and have no other acceptable legitimate explanation as to why you registered the domain, then most likely BMW would be successful in an action against you.

Learn more about our ANT Lawyers Intellectual Property practice, its experience, and team members here. Please contact our Trademark attorneys in Vietnam  for advice via email ant@antlawyers.vn or call us at +84 912 817 823.

Let ANT Lawyers help your business in Vietnam.

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The Purposes of Using Criminal Record Card

Under Clause 1, Article 2 of the Law on Criminal Record 2009, criminal record card is the records on the previous convictions of a person that is sentenced under valid court judgments or decisions, and banning individual from holding position, establishing or managing enterprises and cooperatives in cases where the enterprises or cooperatives are declared bankrupt by the court.

The Purposes of Using Criminal Record Card

Article 7 – The Law on Criminal Record 2009 regulates that the following individual, agencies and organizations may request competent agencies to issue Criminal Record card:

-Vietnamese citizens and foreigners who have been or are residing in Vietnam have the right to request the issuance of their criminal record cards;

-Proceeding agencies may request the issuance of criminal record card for investigation, prosecution and trial;

-State agencies, political organizations and socio-political organizations may request the issuance of criminal record to serve the personnel management, business registration, establishment and management of enterprises and cooperatives.

Criminal record cards include:

a/ Criminal record card no.1 is issued to individual, agencies and organizations defined in Clauses 1 and 3, Article 7 of this Law;

b/ Criminal record card no.2 is issued to agencies conducting the proceedings, defined in Clause 2, Article 7 of this Law and issued at the request of the individual so that he/she can know the contents of his/her criminal resume.

The basic difference of these two types is that the criminal record card no.1 only records the sentence has not been removed. If the case has been deleted, it will state “no criminal record”. The criminal record card no.2 records all previous criminal convictions regardless of whether they were deleted or not.

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I will use my company's name in many applications and products. Is a trademark the best protection?

A trademark typically protects brand names and logos used on goods and services. A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work. A patent protects an invention. For example, if you invent a new kind of vacuum cleaner, you would apply for a patent to protect the invention itself. You would apply to register a trademark to protect the brand name of the vacuum cleaner. And you might register a copyright for the TV commercial that you use to market the product.

Trademark attorneys in Vietnam

The purpose of using a trademark is to uniquely identify your products or services to potential customers. Federal registration of a trademark helps prevent competitors of your business from stealing your business name, logo, or slogan. Registration also protects you against misappropriation by confusingly similar marks used by competitors. Protecting your unique name, logo, or slogan in the form of a trademark is one of the most important investments in your business.

How ANT Lawyers Could Help Your Business?

To learn more about ANT Lawyers IP Practice or contact our Intellectual Property Lawyers in Vietnam for advice via email ant@antlawyers.vn or call our office at (+84) 24 32 23 27 71

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Does copyright apply to contracts?

It depends on the type of contract. A contract written from scratch may be eligible for copyright protection. But, a contract made from a pre-existing template with only a few details changed here and there will not be eligible for protection.

Copyright Law Firm in Vietnam

Coming to your question, it depends on who is the actual author of the contract. If you wrote the contract and are not bound by any confidentiality clause, you can go ahead and use it for your own purposes (including distribution).

Even if someone else wrote it, the answer will remain more or less similar. A contract signed by you can be used for your own purposes but you cannot claim copyright in that contract.

If you use and distribute a contract written by someone else claiming it as your own, it will be a case of violation of copyright.

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Does "Property Law" include "Intellectual Property Law" or are the two areas separate?

They are separate, and largely different forms of law. Most of what is commonly referred to as "property law" deals with what is called real property; real estate, land, etc.   However, it does have some aspects of dealing with tangible personal property (which also overlaps with tort and criminal law)

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property is a significantly different form of law drawing on other areas (notably unfair competition law, especially for trademarks; law of agency; business law; etc.) but is fundamentally its own "thing."

A notable example of the difference is the phrase "Possession is 9/10ths of the law." This may be true in property law, where a possessor has superior rights to most everybody but the true owner. However, it would fall flat in IP, where your status as the legal rightsholder is the most important question.

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