HOW TO CLASSIFY PROPER GOODS AND SERVICES IN REGISTERING TRADEMARKS IN VIETNAM?

Under the Vietnam Intellectual Property Law, the official fees are calculated based on the applicant’s number of registering classes as well as the number of specific items of goods/services in those classes. For additional item of goods/services exceeding the 6th item, the applicant will have to pay for extra fee (official fee of VND150,000, excluding service fee).

In order to estimate accurate fee, the applicant must clarify specific items in a particular class of goods or services in the Nice Classification being applied by the NOIP which is presented in both English and Vietnamese (the 11^th Nice Classification). The list of each item in the general class must be spaced by a semicolon among it. Hence, it is recommended to describe your goods/services clearly rather than generally.

For obtaining the best scope of protection and powerful measurements to deal with potential infringement in the future, the applicant is advised to file the trademarks application for exact and specific items of goods or services which the company is manufacturing or trading and especially, designating for other general goods or services as large as possible covering or near-by the production items to get the broadest scope of protection.

Beyond the aforesaid principles, there are still some notes on particular items of goods or services that the applicant should pay attention to:

In order to determine the scope of protection, for example: “trading, wholesale and retail store, installation, designing” must be clarified the subject you intend to: i.e. Trading of cosmetics; wholesale and retail store in the field of clothing, handbags, computers; installation of computer software, dress designing, etc.
“Functional food” is always classified in class 05, instead of class 29 or 30
Producing service of a particular product will not be acceptable by the NOIP until it is transferred to corresponding goods class.

Please have a look at the summary of Nice classification in Vietnam right here.

In a nutshell, to minimize the risk and optimize the protection possibility, the applicant is advised to specify the of goods or services carefully and look for consultation if they feel uncertain about the classification in Vietnam if they don’t want to be refused from the beginning of formality examination, which is costly and time consuming.