Vietnam's Amended IP Law 2025 — What Actually Changed

Effective 1 April 2026, Vietnam’s amended IP Law significantly shortens examination timelines, establishes the country’s first legal framework for AI-generated works, and introduces dedicated provisions enabling IP rights to be used as capital contributions and loan collateral.

01 · Administrative Reform

Shorter Examination Timelines — The Exact Numbers

This is the most tangible change for applicants. Processing timelines across all industrial property application types have been significantly reduced, as shown in the tables below.

Substantive Examination Deadlines (Article 119, amended by Article 1(44) of Law 131/2025)

Application Type	Previous Law	From 01 Apr 2026
Patents	18 months	12 months −33%
Trademarks	9 months	5 months −44%
Industrial Designs	7 months	5 months −29%
Geographical Indications	6 months	5 months −17%
Publication deadline (trademarks, industrial designs, geographical indications)	2 months	1 month −50%

Third-Party Opposition Deadlines (Article 112a, amended by Article 1(37) of Law 131/2025)

Application Type	Previous Law	From 01 Apr 2026
Patents	9 months	6 months −33%
Trademarks	5 months	3 months −40%
Industrial Designs	4 months	3 months −25%
Geographical Indications	3 months	3 months unchanged

Expedited examination — entirely new (Article 119, clause 2a): For patent and trademark applications meeting conditions set by the Government, applicants may request expedited substantive examination and receive a decision within 3 months — compared to 12 or 5 months under the standard track. When the expedited track is selected, the third-party opposition window for patents is also shortened to 3 months (down from 6 months under standard examination).

02 · Simplified Filing Requirements

Article 100 Rewritten — From Exhaustive Lists to Applicant Accountability

The previous Article 100 enumerated every required document in detail: declaration forms, technical documentation, powers of attorney, proof of filing rights, genetic resource disclosures, fee receipts, and more. The amended law replaces this with a single governing principle:

“An industrial property application shall comprise documents relating to the subject matter for which protection is sought and other relevant documents.”

Each application may only request one protection title for a single object. In return, the applicant bears full responsibility for the accuracy and truthfulness of all information declared. Where the competent authority establishes that declared information is inaccurate or false, the protection title may be revoked at any time.

Pre-publication confidentiality (Article 111 — amended and supplemented): All information in patent and industrial design applications must be kept strictly confidential until the application is published in the Industrial Property Gazette. Officials who disclose such information are subject to disciplinary action and must compensate any resulting damages to the applicant.

03 · Artificial Intelligence & IP

Vietnam’s First AI–IP Legal Framework — Core Principles

This is the most historically significant development. Law 131/2025 is the first Vietnamese legislation to formally establish an IP framework for the AI era. Most of the principles below are derived from the statutory definitions and provisions delegating further detail to the Government — specific implementing regulations are still pending at the time of entry into force.

AI–IP Framework — effective 01 April 2026

✕AI cannot be an IP rights holder. Under amended Article 4(1), IP rights belong to “organisations and individuals” — AI falls into neither category and therefore cannot be recognised as an owner of IP rights.

✕Outputs generated autonomously by AI, without meaningful human creative input, are unlikely to qualify for protection. This follows from existing definitions; however, Article 6(5) delegates to the Government the detailed rules for establishing rights where AI is used in creation — leaving the question partly open pending a Decree.

✓Humans using AI as a tool may still be recognised as authors or inventors — provided they make a meaningful creative contribution: supplying the original idea, directing the process, selecting among outputs, or substantially editing AI-generated material.

✓Lawfully published IP materials may be used to train AI systems (Article 7(5)), provided such use does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate rights and interests of the rights holder. For text and data that are works protected by copyright, additional conditions set by the Government also apply.

!Implementing regulations are still pending. Article 6(5) expressly delegates to the Government the task of prescribing how IP rights arise and are established when AI is used in the creation process. Specific rules for AI-generated works will follow in a Government Decree.

04 · IP Commercialisation

Patents and Trademarks as Capital Contributions and Loan Collateral

Entirely new Article 8a is the most significant policy shift in the amended law. IP rights have been recognised as assets under the Civil Code 2015 (Article 105), but this is the first time the specialised IP Law contains a dedicated provision on commercialisation — and explicitly signals the State’s policy of encouraging IP assets to enter commercial circulation:

Capital contribution	IP rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, etc.) may be used as capital contributions to establish or join a business entity, subject to applicable investment and enterprise law.
Loan collateral	The State encourages the use of IP rights as collateral for loans, in accordance with investment, enterprise and credit legislation (Article 8a(3)).
Valuation & transfer	The State supports Vietnamese organisations and individuals in valuing IP rights and applying licensing, assignment and IP-for-equity models (Article 8(3a)).
Internal governance	IP owners are required to maintain a separate register of IP assets that do not yet meet the conditions for recognition as balance-sheet assets under accounting law (Article 8a(1)).

The State retains the power to prohibit, restrict or compel the transfer of IP rights in exceptional circumstances — national defence, national security, public health and social order (Article 7(3)). For the first time, the law also introduces a mechanism to resolve conflicts where multiple IP rights exist over the same subject matter: a later-arising right may be ordered by a court to cease being exercised where it conflicts with the normal exploitation of an earlier right (Article 7(4)).

05 · Enforcement in the Digital Environment

Tightened Liability for Digital Platforms and E-Commerce Marketplaces

The amendments to Article 198b draw a clear distinction between two categories of liable parties — previously lumped together under the label “intermediary”:

1Intermediary service providers

Entities providing the technical infrastructure and digital platforms through which third parties upload and distribute digital content online, or that provide online connectivity for public access to such content (Article 198b(1), amended). Legal liability is now more precisely scoped per service type.

2Digital platform operators new — Article 198b(5a)

Social networks, e-commerce marketplaces and content-sharing applications are now required to implement technical and administrative measures to prevent IP infringement on their platforms, in accordance with IP law, e-commerce law and cybersecurity law.

3New judicial remedies for online infringement

Under new Article 202(7), courts may now order the removal, concealment or disabling of access to infringing information, content, accounts, websites, applications or internet addresses on cyberspace — including cross-border platforms. This is an entirely new civil remedy in Vietnam’s IP Law.

4Protection extended to non-physical designs

For the first time, industrial design protection is extended to non-physical products — encompassing digital interfaces, 3D-rendered designs, NFTs and metaverse applications (amended Article 4(13) and new Article 124(2)(d)).

IP awareness in education: The amendments emphasise integrating IP knowledge into general and higher education curricula and strengthening outreach to businesses and the public — aimed at building broader societal awareness of intellectual property rights.

Legal basis: Law No. 131/2025/QH15 — Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Law on Intellectual Property, passed by the XV National Assembly at its 10th Session on 10 December 2025. Effective 01 April 2026. Consolidated Text No. 155/VBHN-VPQH dated 9 September 2025 issued by the National Assembly Office. This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.