While Vietnam, like the rest of the world, has been focusing on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vietnamese courts have quietly recorded new milestones in the judgment of patent cases. One of those milestones came on March 12, 2020, in a decision on appeal settlement issued by the Superior People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City against a provincial court’s decision on suspension of a patent case.Starting from a Simple Case

While Vietnam’s economy has grown quiet during the first half of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s legal framework for intellectual property enforcement seems to be exploding with the entry of new legal instruments. The EVFTA (EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement), coming on the heels of the CPTPP, will come into force in Vietnam on August 1, 2020, bringing about some major changes to the current IPE framework. We discuss a few of these changes below.Preliminary Injunctions

As previously reported, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam launched a patent prosecution highway (PPH) pilot program last year with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), following a very successful and ongoing pilot program with the Japanese Patent Office (JPO). The two-year Korea program began on June 1, 2019, and will end on May 31, 2021. The number of PPH requests accepted per year is limited to 100 from each office.

The intellectual property offices of Southeast Asia have implemented measures ranging from deadline extensions to expanded online services to cope with office closures and other issues brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Below, we summarize the responses in our jurisdictions. This information reflects the current status as of June 1, 2020, and is subject to change.Cambodia