Duong & Tran Intellectual Property

Accelerate the Examination of Vietnamese Patent Applications in Certain Special Cases

8/7/2026

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 patent application where certain conditions prescribed by the Government are satisfied. This provision creates considerable convenience for applicants, giving them the opportunity to obtain a patent earlier and to be more proactive in commercializing their rights to the invention and implementing business plans relating to the invention.

Conditions for Requesting Expedited Substantive Examination of a Patent Application

A patent application shall be subject to expedited substantive examination if it satisfies all of the following conditions:

  • The invention stated in the application falls within the List of Strategic Technologies and Strategic Technology Products under the law on high technology, or the invention is researched and exploited for emergency situations relating to security, national defense, natural disasters, or epidemics;
  • The invention that is the subject matter stated in the application has been commercially exploited;
  • A request for early publication of the patent application is filed at the time of filing the application;
  • The patent application contains no more than 10 claims, of which no more than 2 are independent claims; and
  • The patent application is not a divisional application or a converted application.

Mandatory Documents

  • A request for expedited substantive examination (in the prescribed form);
  • 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.

Fees

The applicant must pay the official fees for a request for expedited substantive examination of a patent application. However, no specific regulations on the applicable fees are currently in place.

Examination Procedure and Shortened Examination Timeline upon Request for Expedited Substantive Examination of a Patent Application

The statutory time limit for substantive examination of a patent application is 12 months from the date of filing the request for substantive examination or from the publication date of the application, whichever is later (the substantive examination commencement date). Where a request for expedited substantive examination of a patent application is made and satisfies the conditions mentioned above, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IPVN) shall issue a notice of substantive examination results for the application within 3 months from the date of receipt of the applicant’s request.

Where a request for expedited substantive examination does not satisfy the above conditions, IPVN shall issue a notice of the examination results of the request for expedited substantive examination, clearly stating the intended reasons for refusal or the deficiencies, and setting a time limit of 10 working days from the date of the notice for the applicant to provide its opinion or remedy the deficiencies.

If, upon expiry of the above time limit, the applicant fails to remedy the deficiencies, or the remedy is unsatisfactory, or the applicant does not object, or its objection is unjustified, IPVN shall, within 10 working days from the expiry of the above time limit, notify its refusal of the request for expedited substantive examination, and the patent application shall be examined under the normal procedure;

Should you require further assistance regarding the above matter, please feel free to contact us at the following e-mail address: hanoi@duongtran.vn.