MORE THAN half a decade ago we wrote many articles about how USTR and other US front groups pressured Vietnam into becoming a vassal of Microsoft. It is a pretty serious matter because using subversive political means they manage to make nations do things against their national interests.
"...using subversive political means they manage to make nations do things against their national interests."Well, USTR and CoC et cetera seem to have pressured Vietnam into being a slave state again, under guise of 'IP'.
"Amendments implemented in January bring more clarity to Vietnam’s IP procedural rules law. Some areas have been made more stringent for IP owners while there is a lack of clarity on transition provisions for pending applications," Karry Lai wrote yesterday, contributing to a patent maximalists' site.
Vietnam is basically copying Western standards after being named in all sorts of "shame lists" and facing sanctions of all sorts.
We recently wrote about Brazil's EPO and USPTO PPH agreements (rushed examination), rendering the Brazilian system more like INPI (to the point where it was suggested that all patent applicationz should be blindly approved and patents of dubious quality granted en masse).
"BPTO implemented a pilot programme aimed at tackling the backlog of patent applications at the office," says this new article without delving into any of the details. It was published yesterday:
The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) has extended its Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) agreement with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
According to a BPTO bulletin, the agreement, which had a deadline of 31 January 2018, has been extended to 10 May 2018.
[..]
In January, the BPTO implemented a pilot programme aimed at tackling the backlog of patent applications at the office.