How to distinguish patents and copyrights?

Criteria

Copyrights

Patent

Definition

Is the right of organizations and individuals to works created or owned by them.

Is a technical solution in the form of a product or process that aims to solve a defined problem by applying the laws of nature.

Objects of protection

• Includes literary, artistic, and scientific works;
• Subjects of copyright-related rights include performances, sound recordings, video recordings, broadcasts, and satellite signals the program is encrypted.

Products and processes created by humans ensure novelty, creativity, and industrial applicability.

Conditions of protection

Originality

• Novelty
• Creative level
• Industrial applicability

Unprotected objects

• Creative ideas are not expressed in any material form;
• Pure news reporting;
• Legal documents, administrative documents, other documents of the judicial field, and official translations of such documents;
• Processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, and figures.

• Inventions, scientific theories, and mathematical methods;
• Schemes, plans, rules, and methods for carrying out mental activities, training pets, conducting games, and business; computer programs;
• How information is expressed;
• The solution has only aesthetic properties;
• Plant varieties, animal breeds;
• The production process of plants and animals is mainly biological and not a microbiological process;
• Methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases in humans and animals.

Term of protection

• Moral rights specified in clauses 1, 2, and 4, Article 19 of the IP Law 2005 are protected indefinitely.
• Moral rights specified in clause 3, Article 19, and property rights specified in Article 20 have the following protection periods:
• Cinematographic, photographic, applied arts, and anonymous works have a protection period of 75 years from the date the work is first published.
• Works that have not been published within 25 years from the date the work is shaped, the term of protection is 100 years since the work was shaped.
• In anonymous works, when information about the author appears, the protection period is for the life of the author and 50 years following the year of the author’s death.
• Works that do not fall into the categories specified above have a term of protection for the life of the author and 50 years following the year of the author’s death. In the case of co-authors, the protection period ends in the 50th year after the year of death of the last co-author.
• Note: The term of protection specified in the above sections ends after 24 hours on December 31 of the year in which the term of copyright protection ends.

• The patent is valid from the date of issuance and lasts until the end of 20 years from the date of filing.
• To maintain the validity of a patent, the patent holder must pay a validity fee.

Grounds for deriving rights

Arises automatically when the work is shaped.

Apply.

Method to apply for protection

Register copyright at the Copyright Office.

Register a patent protection claim at the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam.

International protectionism

Protected irrespective of the form of expression in many countries around the world under the Berne Convention.

Registered and granted patents in specific countries and defined under the Paris Convention, TRIPS Agreement, and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).