Determination of the Priority Date in an Industrial Property Application

Section 13 of Circular 01/2007/TT-BKHCN, which provides guidance on the implementation of Decree 103/2006/ND-CP detailing the implementation of the Intellectual Property Law concerning industrial property, issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and amended by Clause 12, Article 1 of Circular 16/2016/TT-BKHCN, stipulates the determination of the priority date in industrial property applications as follows:

- If the application does not include a request for priority rights or the request for priority rights is not accepted by the Intellectual Property Office, the application is considered to have no priority date.

- If the application includes a request for priority rights, the priority date (or priority dates) is the date stated in the aforementioned request and accepted by the Intellectual Property Office.

- The determination of the priority date based on a request for priority rights is based on the first application(s) filed in Vietnam, in accordance with the principles stipulated in Article 91 of the Intellectual Property Law and corresponding regulations in points b, c, and d, Clause 1, Article 10 of Decree No. 103/2006/ND-CP. Specifically, the applicant's request for priority rights shall be accepted if it meets the following conditions:

- The first application was filed in Vietnam or in a member country of the Paris Convention and contains the part corresponding to the request for priority rights of the patent, industrial design, or trademark application;

- The application is filed within the following time limits from the date of the first application: six months for an industrial design or trademark application, twelve months for a patent application;

- The payment of the required fee for the request for priority rights is completed.

This means that for the priority rights request determined in the application request, the priority date will only be accepted if the application meets the aforementioned conditions.

The above constitutes our advisory content.

Sincerely!