How to Accelerate the Examination of Patent Applications in Vietnam
8/10/2026
The 2025 Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Law on Intellectual Property (the IP Law), effective from 1 April 2026, allows an applicant to request expedited substantive examination of a Vietnamese patent application where certain conditions prescribed by the Government are satisfied. In addition, on 31 March 2026, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) issued Circular No. 10/2026/TT-BKHCN, effective from 1 April 2026, with substantive amendment on the mechanism of using search and examination results of corresponding foreign patent applications to expedite the examination of Vietnamese patent applications.
Furthermore, the ASEAN Patent Examination Co-operation Plus (ASPEC+) program was officially launched on 6 April 2026. With the addition and revision of the mechanisms, applicants now have more options to expedite the examination of patent applications in Vietnam. Below is a summary of the options.
Accelerate the Examination of Vietnamese Patent Applications in Certain Special Cases
This procedure is applicable to patent applications satisfying all of the following conditions:
- The invention is in the List of Strategic Technologies and Strategic Technology Products under the legislation on high technology, or the invention is researched and exploited for emergency situations related to security, national defence, natural disasters, and epidemics;
- The invention has been commercially exploited;
- An early publication request is filed at the time of application;
- The patent application has no more than 10 claims, of which no more than 2 are independent;
- The patent application is not a divided application or a converted application.
Applicants must submit documents evidencing that the invention has been commercially exploited within a period of no more than 12 months up to the filing date of the application and paya fee for expedited substantive examination.
The substantive examination period is considerably reduced to 03 months (compared with the normal 12-month period). For more information about this option, please refer to the link Accelerate in special cases.
Using Search and Examination Results of Corresponding Foreign Patent Applications
This option is applicable to patent applications satisfying all of the following conditions:
- The search and examination results of corresponding foreign applications are issued by foreign patent offices which are national or regional intellectual property offices recognized as an International Searching Authority or International Preliminary Examining Authority under the PCT;
- At least one claim is determined as patentable under the foreign examination results and the claims of the Vietnamese application must be identical to the patentable/allowed claims;
- Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IPVN) has not yet issued a notice of substantive examination results for the Vietnamese application;
The period for substantive examination is reduced to 08 months. Currently, there is no official fee under this procedure. For more information about the procedure, please refer to the link Using foreign examination results.
Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Program between Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and IPVN
The program is in the 4th extended phase from 01 April 2025to 31 March 2028. There is a maximum of 200 requests filed each year in Vietnam. Of those 200 requests, a maximum of 100 is permitted from 1 April to 30 September, with the remainder permitted from 1 October to 31 March.
This procedure is applicable where:
- There is a corresponding JP patent application (which is the priority application first filed in JP or a PCT application for which JPO is the receiving office) and one or more claims of the JP application is determined patentable/allowable by the JPO;
- Claims in the Vietnamese application subject to PPH request must sufficiently correspond to one or more allowable claims of the corresponding JP application(s);
- IPVN has not begun examination of the application at the time of request for the PPH;
- A “Request for Substantive Examination” must have been filed at IPVN either at the time of the PPH request or previously.
The period for substantive examination is reduced to 08-09 months. There is no official fee under this procedure. For more information about the procedure, please refer to the link JP-VN-PPH.
PPH Program between Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and IPVN
The program is in the extended phase from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2028. There is a maximum of 100 requests filed each year in Vietnam.
This procedure is applicable where:
- There is a corresponding KR patent application (which is the priority application first filed in KR or a PCT application for which KIPO is the receiving office) and one or more claims of the KR application is determined patentable/allowable by the KIPO;
- Claims in the Vietnamese application subject to PPH request must sufficiently correspond to one or more allowable claims of the corresponding KR application(s);
- IPVN has not begun examination of the application at the time of request for the PPH;
- A “Request for Substantive Examination” must have been filed at IPVN either at the time of the PPH request or previously.
The period for substantive examination is reduced to 08-09 months. There is no official fee under this procedure. For more information about the procedure, please refer to the link KR-VN-PPH.
ASEAN Patent Examination Cooperation (ASPEC) Program
This program is available where there are allowable/patentable claims in corresponding foreign patent application(s) from other eight participating ASEAN member states (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, or Thailand) and all claims of the Vietnamese patent application must sufficiently correspond to allowable/patentable claims of the corresponding foreign patent application(s). Corresponding applications mean the applications claim priority to each other, share a priority claim, or are national phase entries of the same PCT application.
The period for substantive examination is reduced to 08-09 months. There is no official fee under this program. For more information about the program, please refer to the link ASPEC.
ASPEC Plus (ASPEC+) program
Applicants may apply for the program if they wish Patent Offices in ASPEC+ participating members (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) to share the search and substantive examination results for the corresponding patent applications with each other. A Vietnamese application must satisfy all of the following requirements:
- No office action or report has been issued at the time of filing the ASPEC+ request;
- There must be corresponding applications in the participating members, i.e., the applications claim priority to each other, share a priority claim, or are national phase entries of the same PCT application;
- Claim sets in the corresponding applications must be identical or sufficiently correspond to each other.
The period for issuance of the first Office Action is 10 to 14 months. With this period, the program does not guarantee expedited examination, however, by sharing search and examination results, IPVN’s workload may be reduced through reference to work done by other patent offices, which may help accelerate examination to a certain extent. There is also no official fee under this program. For more information about the program, please refer to the link ASPEC+.
Should you require further assistance regarding the above matter, please feel free to contact us at the following e-mail address: hanoi@duongtran.vn.