According to the Notice No. 13235/TB-SHTT dated November 23, 2018 of the National Office of Intellectual Property (NOIP) of Vietnam, as of January 01, 2019, the new version of IPC (2019.01) under Strasbourg Agreement shall be officially applied for the classification of technical solutions which claim protection in the application for patent registration in Vietnam. Besides the versions in two authentic languages as English and French provided by WIPO, the Vietnamese version also translated from English to assist individuals or organizations to register patent in Vietnam.
Under the provisions of Point 23.5 of Circular No. 01/2007 / TT-BKHCN, particularly, section “International Patent Classification” states that in the application for patent registration in Vietnam, the patent applicant should indicate the classification of technical solution which claims for protection in accordance with the latest IPC (under Strasbourg Agreement) published by the NOIP on the Industrial Property Gazette (full classification including section, class, subclass, main group or subgroup). In case, the applicant fails to classify correctly, the NOIP will proceed with classifying and collecting fees from the applicant.
IPC is a system of sorting inventions and their documents into technical fields covering all areas of technology and it is an effective search tool to determine the novelty and innovation of a technical solution. Currently, most countries in the world used IPC system for patent registrations and documents published by their country. As a result, the search for patent documents of each country becomes much easier and convenient than ever before when each country adopted their own national patent classification.
