Thứ Hai, 29 tháng 1, 2018

What is the effect of an international patent application?

The PCT is an international treaty with more than 145 Contracting States. The PCT makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in a large number of countries by filing a single “international” patent application instead of filing several separate national or regional patent applications. The granting of patents remains under the control of the national or regional patent Offices in what is called the “national phase”.


In general terms, your international patent application, provided that it complies with the minimum requirements for obtaining an international filing date, has the effect of a national patent application (and certain regional patent applications) in or for all PCT Contracting States. Moreover, if you comply with certain formal requirements set out in the Treaty and Regulations, which are binding on all of the PCT Contracting States, subsequent adaptation to varying national (or regional) formal requirements (and the cost associated therewith) will not be necessary.
Who has the right to file an international patent application under the PCT?
You are entitled to file an international patent application if you are a national or resident of a PCT Contracting State. If there are several applicants named in the international application, only one of them needs to comply with this requirement.



Thứ Năm, 25 tháng 1, 2018

What are the pros and cons of intellectual property?

Intellectual Property Rights Pros and Cons

Your company’s name, logo and even your products belong, well, to your company. In a perfect world, that’s how things would remain. These are all forms of intellectual property – you own the rights to that property (intellectual property rights). However, this is far from a perfect world. A quick look at the number of lawsuits revolving around IPR should highlight just how easily one company can infringe on another’s rights, even unintentionally. It also seems to make sense that if you have rights to intellectual property, you should fight for those rights. Is that always the case? Actually, there are quite a few pros and cons here.



Intellectual Property Rights Pros

There are quite a few pros to protecting your rights in terms of intellectual property. For instance, patents, trademarks and copyrights all give your business important advantages and incentives. Trademarks allow you to build your brand and create a stronger company. That applies to every other company out there, as well. Copyright ensures that a creator continues to own his or her artistic creation (books, artwork, graphic design work, etc.). Patents foster invention and innovation, as well as encouraging inventors to fully explain what’s being invented and how it works.

Intellectual Property Rights Cons

While there are plenty of pros in favor of protecting your rights, there are a few drawbacks here as well. For instance, copyright can be given to works that truly don’t deserve protection under the law, and patents can be given to frivolous things (Amazon’s patenting of “pictures on a white background” is a perfect example of patent frivolity). Other cons involve costs – protecting your rights can be very expensive. Intellectual property rights lawyers (IPR lawyers), court costs, settlement fees, filing fees and numerous other costs can mount very quickly, making protection of intellectual property rights expensive for even very large companies.




Thứ Ba, 23 tháng 1, 2018

How important is intellectual property protection for a startup?

If you could obtain a patent, that would be a great place to start and you should definitely pursue that. A patent would basically grant you a monopoly on the technology and let you exclude others from using it, or at least they would have to pay you for such use. But, assuming there is no patentable technology like you said, any other intellectual property right  (IP) may or may not be worth it. It really would depend on your business model and plan.



A trademark on the name of your company is an example of an IP right that could be valuable in building your brand. The trademark would ensure that no one else could use your name and free ride off of any goodwill that you may have worked to build among consumers and customers in the marketplace. On the other hand, that may not be super important to you at the early stages of your startup and you may want to wait until later to get such protection.

IP rights definitely have value because they allow you to differentiate yourself from competitors. However, there will also be a cost of protection. You need to determine whether such value is worth the cost of protection. Sounds easy enough, but if you do decide to pursue IP rights, you should consult with an IP attorney who can help you through the process.

If you are looking for an IP attorney, but are concerned about the typical costs associated with the traditional legal search, you should visit ANTLawyers where we work to trim those costs. We will match you with an experienced IP attorney in Vietnam for a free, no obligation consultation. Hope this helps.






Thứ Sáu, 19 tháng 1, 2018

How do I protect intellectual property for my software?

How do I protect intellectual property for my software?
To protect yourself you can apply for a software patent, but it’s an expensive, time-consuming process with no guarantee. The alternative is to find a work around, you could consider the following steps:



1. Keep It Close
Be very careful about any outsourcing partner you work with, either domestically or overseas. Make sure they have adequate security in place to protect your IP when they work on it. As well, be careful how your IP is accessed by remote teams.

2. Cover Your Legal Bases And Encrypt Your IP
When you work with a developer (local or overseas) you should make sure you have strong legal agreements in place that are enforceable in the developer’s local court system as well. You should also employ strong encryption internally for sensitive IP, and make sure y okour partners employ the proper levels of encryption. It seems like a lot of overhead, but it is far cheaper than dealing with a breach of trust later.

3. Document Everything
Beside as patent, keeping a running log or journal of what has been done and when can help you defend your property if it is stolen. This journal should start with the inception of the idea, include every meeting you have, who was invited, and who attended. Using a product with a reliable date and time stamp and having a paper copy of the important moments helps prove ownership of your idea.

4. Talk To An Expert
There are numerous ways to protect your IP, such as patents, trademarks, design rights and trade secrets. It’s about accepting that you need expert guidance early and preparation. What do you need to protect and how? Where, when and what is the timeline for applying in different regions? What do you need to budget for? Talk to the experts so you can understand, prepare and budget.

5. Idea Plus Execution Plus Cash Equals Success
Great ideas are a dime a dozen – at least 10 people are working on your great idea right now! The winner will execute well, getting the idea to market fast along with the operating model needed to provide great customer service. And if you’ve ever tried to start a business, you know your time frame to profit is 3x your original plan. Cash is your life blood extending your timeline to success.

6. Offer The Best Experience In Order To Protect And Profit From Your IP
Besides applying for a patent, I am not sure there is any other good option. Reverse engineering is becoming commonplace, trade secrets are becoming more difficult to protect, and patent trolls are appearing everywhere. I think offering the best experience to your user with your technology is — or should be — the only way to properly profit from it.

7. Move Fast
Depending on your idea, IP protection might be a necessary evil. Necessary because it can provide some protection from others attempting to copy you. At the same time, IP tends to be limited in its application (protects your idea but not variants) and can be expensive to defend. Instead, I always advise that IP is less important than speed to commercialization. Move faster than the competition.

8. Be Fast And Agile
Organize your technology department to be flexible and agile — staying fast and creative will keep you innovating ahead of larger, slower competitors.

9. Use Good Security Measures
At a minimum, all source code should be clearly labeled with a confidentiality notice, warning that unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited and should be kept on secure systems within your facility. Only allow authorized personnel to access it. When software is deployed into the field, consider using third-party digital encryption solutions to wrap your software in a security envelope.

For further details, you should visit ANTLawyers – IP Services in Vietnam - Smart Platform for Legal, Accounting & Compliance services.



Thứ Hai, 15 tháng 1, 2018

Which firm is better and cheaper for trademark registration?

The problem that many people face at the very start is that researching existing trademarks is not only an incredibly tedious process, but it’s also easy to make a simple oversight that could lead to inability to complete the trademark. In the end, you can waste a considerable amount of time and money.


If you are searching for a reputable attorney, then I assume that you recognize the challenges.
A lawyer can help simply the process by:
-Completing thorough research
-Meeting strict deadlines within the process
-Counseling you about ways to use the trademark

ANTLawyers has access to several trademark attorneys that are incredibly skilled, but also much more affordable than traditional law firm prices. Our business is dedicated to transforming how people obtain legal services. We utilize technology as a platform for communication and easy access. Because our attorneys work for themselves, their rates are incredibly affordable and they offer flexible payment solutions. Let’s get in touch and talk about your options.


Thứ Ba, 9 tháng 1, 2018

I have an idea that has to do with “social networking”. Do I patent or copyright it?

“What’s the deal with copyrights?” and “What’s the deal with patents?”

Copyrights protect works of authorship, but not abstract ideas. A work of authorship is something specific… it’s words on a page (including lines of code on a hard drive), it’s paint on a canvas (or colored pixels on a screen), it’s musical notes on an iPod.

The Harry Potter books begin with these lines:
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.”

Those lines are protected by copyright. But does JK Rowling own the idea of a story involving three kids who get into mischief and adventure at a magical school? No. That’s too much of an abstraction of her work. That’s the idea of her work, but not the expression. Copyrights cover only the expression, not the idea.

So let’s say your social networking idea involves making a separate social network for left-handed bowling historians. You can probably protect your logo with copyrights. You can probably protect some visual aspects of the web page layout. But you can’t protect the mere idea of a social network for left-handed bowling historians with copyrights.

What’s the deal with patents?

Patents cover functional inventions. New molecules for treating illness, new car components for faster or more efficient engines, new chips for better electronics, that kind of thing. Computer software does sometimes count. But once again, patents don’t cover abstract ideas, only applications of ideas.

It’s a little tricky, because the line between “abstract idea” and “application” is very blurry. I mean, even to the point where professional patent attorneys don’t always agree where the line is.

Without knowing more, it’s tough to tell if a “social networking idea” is abstract or concrete. (To be sure, I’m not asking to know more. Don’t tell me, it's your confidential information right now.) That’s the first hurdle.

The second hurdle is that your idea has to be new and non-obvious in order to be patented. My left-handed bowling historian thing is probably new, but probably not non-obvious from the perspective of the patent office. There are no technical challenges that one has to solve to make a social network for left-handed bowling historians, so that social network would probably be considered an obvious variation of existing social networks.

But let’s say you come up with some kind of really cool screening method. Let’s say you figure out — remarkably — a way to tell if someone is a left-handed bowling historian simply by scanning their retina. That would be amazing, and super-patentable. You could use that technology to limit access to your otherwise-unpatentable social network.

Now the bad news: let’s say your idea is patentable. How do you get a patent? Well, it costs money. The typical “retail” price of a patent application is about $10K to get it filed. Most of that is taken up by an attorney or patent agent who drafts your patent application. You can draft the patent application yourself, but it’s… hard.

Then let’s say you get a patent. That doesn’t mean competitors will respect it. You have to be ready to detect infringers and enforce your patent against them. This also costs money.

Big business is… tough.


Thứ Năm, 4 tháng 1, 2018

How can I do a reaction video without getting a copyright strike?

How can I do a reaction video without getting a copyright strike? Why do some people skip and cut the video while others don’t?
Your first problem is that the way most reaction videos are made, they are absolutely an illegal copyright infringement.


This whole things about skipping and cutting is an attempt to avoid being detected by YouTube’s upload scanner, Content ID. You are asking us how to circumvent detection, not how to do this legally.

Because legal use will probably still be flagged by Content ID, and then you have to appeal your copyright strike based on a Fair Use argument. But that argument might fail, since there is no legal requirement that YouTube display your content, even if it does qualify as fair use. After all, perfectly legal porn is banned on their website, as is some other content.

Fair use is only intended for reviews, criticism, parody (and other uses that aren’t applicable here: academic use, news reporting, etc.) Most “reaction videos” could possibly be reviews, but the people reacting aren’t actually reviewing, they are just reacting. Not the same thing.


Tax Obligations of Representative Offices in Vietnam

Foreign entities have found Vietnam as an increasing attractive destination for investment.  They could consider entering Vietnam in various forms, including setting up representative offices.

“A representative office is a dependent unit of the enterprise, having the task of representing under authorization the interests of the enterprise and protecting such interests” (Clause 2 of article 45, Law on Enterprises 2014). “Representative office shall perform the functions of liaison offices, market surveys, promotion of business opportunities for traders they represent, excluding those in which the establishment of representative offices in that field, it is stipulated in specialized legal documents” (Article 30 – Decree No.07/2016/ND-CP decree detailed regulations on establishment of representative offices or branches of foreign traders in Vietnam under Laws on Commerce).

A representative office is a dependent unit of a foreign enterprise in Vietnam, and it acts under the authorization of foreign enterprises. Representative office shall not conduct business activities therefore, the tax obligations of the representative office are limited, such as:
Firstly, as representative office does not involve profit making activity, hence there are no Value Added Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Annual Due incurred.
Secondly, representative office has to register its tax code, to deduct and pay Personal Income Tax on behalf of its employees working in the representative office or deduct and pay contractor taxes for foreign sub-contractors (if any).