Intellectual Property and Vietnam’s Higher Education System

Four major challenges face Vietnam’s higher education system in the area of intellectual property (IP). These challenges are significant because, more than ever before, Vietnamese academics are generating copyrighted writings, textbooks, and teaching-related software; potentially patentable inventions, medicines, and processes; and other valuable materials. The challenges are the following: (1) the need to develop, among faculty and students, a greater understanding of economic and moral IP rights in academic research; (2) the need to expand the teaching of IP, both in the general university curriculum and in pre-professional programs; (3) confusion over the ownership of IP rights within Vietnamese universities; and (4) the need for institutions to enhance their internal business capacity to commercialize faculty-created IP by means of technology licensing offices or similar means. The chapter concludes that faculty-generated IP can play a significant role in furthering autonomy and decentralization in Vietnam’s universities by rewarding individual and institutional initiative with economic benefits. Moreover, to the extent that faculty inventions can be commercialized and tested by the rigors of the marketplace, IP can provide a form of quality assurance within universities that is concrete and measurable.