Malaysia joined the world's largest global trademark registration system making

nearly all of ASEAN countries (except Myanmar and East Timor) become the membership of the Madrid system

Email to: vinh@bross.vn

According to the WIPO[1], on September 27, 2019, the Malaysian government deposited an instrument to join the Madrid Protocol[2], making Malaysia the 106th member, which currently covers the territory of 122 countries around the world.

According to the Malasian government, the Madrid Protocol would begin to take effect on Malaysia from December 27, 2019. Thus, only for Southeast Asia including 11 countries (including East Timor), almost all countries of ASEAN have acceded to the largest international trademark registration system, in which Vietnam was the first contracting state (March 8, 1949), Singapore (October 31, 2000), the Philippines (July 25, 2012), Cambodia (June 5, 2015), and Laos (July 7). March 3, 2016, Brunei (January 6, 2017), Thailand (November 7, 2017), Indonesia (January 2, 2018), and Malaysia (waiting for until December 27, 2019).

Given that the Madrid system-based trademark international registration is characterized with the fact that only one application in only single language with only single payment for seeking protection as many 100 countries as possible would it become much more predominant than the traditional application of each country each application. But another huge advantage of the Madrid system is very low cost. For example, supposing you are intending to register one trademark in one class (this mark was filed or registered in Vietnam) based on the Madrid system seeking protection in Southeast Asian (except for Malaysia, Myanmar and East Timor), only less than 50 million VND governments’ fees is payable while if registering in a traditional way you must spend a cost of nearly 130 million VND.

As such, Vietnamese businesses or entities having Vietnamese nationality those who have had Malaysian market or are about to enter the Malaysian market, pay attention to the information and start taking advantage of that by protecting their brand names in Malaysia on December 27, 2019.

Bross & Partners has abundant experiences in assisting clients in registering trademarks and industrial designs abroad, especially in Asean, Japan, China, USA, EU and Korea. If you have specific needs, please contact vinh@bross.vn or phone 0903 287 057.

Bross & Partners, a renowned intellectual property law firm founded in 2008, regularly ranked/recommended as one of the Vietnam's leading intellectual property law firms by the reputable legal guides such as the Managing Intellectual Property (MIP), Jetro, World Trademark Review (WTR1000), Legal 500 Asia Pacific, AsiaLaw Profiles, Asia Leading Lawyers, Asia IP and Asian Legal Business (ALB). Bross & Partners has had intensive expertise and extensive experience enabling it to assist clients to effectively protect or defense in complex intellectual property disputes regarding trademark, copyright, related rights, patent, design and domain name in Vietnam and abroad.