"Industrial design" is defined in the Vietnam intellectual property law effective on July 01, 2006 as the exterior appearance of a product represented in shape, lines, colors or any combination thereof.

Before the Vietnam intellectual property law came into effect, the notion of a product, in Design Regulations No. 29/2003/TT-BKHCN, was interpreted as an object, instrument, item of equipment or means and so forth which is produced by industrial or handicraft methods, has a clear structure and function and can be circulated independently.

Recently, on December 08, 2009, the Vietnam Intellectual Property Office issued the Guidelines for Examination of Design Applications. Under the guidelines, to be considered as a patentable subject-matter of design protection, a design must satisfy the following requirements:

• It must be applied to a certain product;
• The appearance of a product must be visible and perceivable by the eye; and
• The product with appearance embodying an industrial design must be manufactured by industrial or handicraft methods, have a clear structure and function, and be circulated independently.

The notion of “visible” in the requirement that the appearance of a product must be visible and perceivable by the eye is clarified in the guidelines as “visible in the course of use of the product”, and “use” of a product is understood as the production, circulation, exchange, trading or assembly of the product by any direct users including producers, participants in circulating, traders. Maintenance, servicing and repairing of a product are not considered as “use” of the product.

Availability of circulating a product independently is deemed to be satisfiable if a product with appearance embodying an industrial design belongs to one of the following cases:

• All-in-one block products or complete products assembled from different parts and details. This kind of products may include objects, instruments, items of equipments, means, tools, clothing, foods, pharmaceuticals, materials, boxes, packing, … products in the form of a bar with indefinite length, having a cross-sectional view that is unchanged or changed repeatedly according to the length of a bar (for example: fix figuration metal bars), products “sheets” having an indefinite area with the surface decorated by repeated patterns or designs (e.g fabrics, wallpapers…).
• The parts and details constituting a complete product by mechanical connections or connections by adhesion, sewing, welding…can be disassemble, and all are mass-produced in order to be replaceable. Those may include a product label that is deemed to be a part of a product in the form of a sheet, it is decorated in its surface and is used to adhere or attach to the surface of another product to constitute a complete product.

Availability of circulating a product independently is not deemed to be satisfiable if a product with appearance embodying an industrial design is one of the following:

• The parts and details of a product which are inseparable from the product, or are separable from the product only by destroying the product and no spare parts for replacement are produced.
• A decorative surface part of a product made directly on the surface of the product in the form of patterns, lines, or by painting or drawing directly on the surface of the product, and it is not separated from the product.