The history of intellectual property law of Vietnam: 1945–1994

This thesis centres on the principal question of the existence of intellectual property law between 1945 and 1994 in Vietnam, and related issues that flow therefrom. A common orthodoxy held that there was no real intellectual property law in the country until the early 1980s, and that the law has been a feature of the Vietnamese legal system only since 1981. This common belief is shared by an absolute majority of scholars, lawyers, and practitioners, both domestic and foreign, who have studied the intellectual property law of Vietnam. This thesis will seek to disprove that belief by drawing on extensive archival evidence, to reconstruct, for the first time, a unique, ignored system of laws regulating copyright, patent, and trade mark, among other kinds of intellectual property protection, in existence between 1945 and 1994. In fact, the existing system of intellectual property law was composed of two main sources. The first component part is comprised of a large corpus of colonial laws from France and a small number of indigenous provisions developed by local governments modelled after the French laws, as well as a unique and local common law practice in relation to intellectual property rights which has been recorded since the seventeenth century. This part of the system dated as far back as 1864 and lasted theoretically until 1955 within the context of a colonial and semi-feudal society. The second part, addressed in the principal part of this thesis, is the theory and practice of socialist law. This part was introduced into Vietnam as early as 1945. At first, it was a supplementation to the established, continued body of colonial laws but, subsequently, from the late 1950s, it evolved to become the principal system, replacing the old laws within the framework of socialist legality, upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat and a centrally planned economy. Since 1986, Vietnam has embarked on a radically different route to develop intellectual property law in compliance with various bilateral and international intellectual property and free trade treaties. Consequently, this socialist intellectual property law was finally displaced as of 1994, as the result of various reforms driving the country towards a market-based economy under a rule of law state