5 Pieces of Good News for Businesses, Effective 01 July 2026 🎉⚖️ (Yes, Really — All Five Are Good)

📖 Etymology corner, before we dive in

The word "boon" comes from Old Norse bón — a favor, a request granted, something given freely for someone's benefit. The word "bureaucracy" comes from French bureau ("desk") fused with Greek -kratia ("rule, power") — literally, "rule by desk."

Today's article sits exactly at the intersection of those two words: it's about the rare moment when "rule by desk" politely steps aside and hands you a boon instead. Five of them, actually. Let's count them, Kurzgesagt-style — calm, structured, no roleplay, just the mechanism. 🦊

🧐 Meet our guide through the changes

Founder Penny Swift runs NextGen Innovations Co., a small Vietnamese startup dabbling in software and a bit of hardware. She's about to discover that, starting 01 July 2026, five separate legal instruments quietly made her life easier. Let's walk through her year, before-and-after style. ⏳

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🧐 "The Old Ruling": life before 01 July 2026

Before this date, Penny's reality looked like this:

• 198 business lines required a conditional investment license, including plenty that arguably didn't need one anymore.
• Every enterprise, regardless of size, prepared and filed financial statements — even tiny one-person operations.
• Business registration timelines in Hanoi followed the general statutory framework, without a dedicated fast-track.
• There was no single, official list flagging which high-tech fields qualified for investment priority.
• Fire-safety and labor-safety compliance often meant re-doing acceptance checks even when an earlier appraisal had already cleared the same design.

Verdict on the old setup: thorough, but not exactly speedy. ⏱️

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⚖️ "The New Ruling": what changes on 01 July 2026

Here are Penny's five boons, mapped out:

Let's unpack each one. 👇

1️⃣ Conditional business sectors: cut from 198 down to 142

Under Resolution 66.17/2026/NQ-CP, the Government trimmed 56 sectors off the conditional-investment list. The logic:

• Removing sectors no longer essential for national defense, security, public order, social ethics, or public health.
• Shifting oversight to technical standards — managing risk through post-launch inspection rather than upfront licensing.
• Cutting unclear, duplicated, or dormant conditions — sectors whose "conditions" were vague, overlapping with other rules, or had simply never had implementing conditions issued at all.

🏠 Real-life analogy: it's like a city deciding you no longer need a permit to repaint your own fence, while still requiring one for knocking down a load-bearing wall. The risky stuff stays regulated; the harmless stuff gets out of your way.

2️⃣ Micro-enterprises: goodbye, annual financial statements (for some)

Per Article 10.1, Circular 58/2026/TT-BTC:

• Micro-enterprises paying CIT as a percentage of revenue no longer have to prepare financial statements for submission to state authorities — unless another law specifically requires it.
• Micro-enterprises paying CIT on taxable income still must file annual financial statements, within 90 days of fiscal year-end.

The dividing line isn't "small vs. tiny" — it's which CIT calculation method you use. That detail matters more than headcount.

3️⃣ Hanoi: business registration now takes 2 working days

Under Article 6, Resolution 12/2026/NQ-HĐND (Hanoi People's Council), the standard processing time drops to 2 working days from full-dossier receipt for:

• Private enterprises, single-member LLCs, multi-member LLCs, joint stock companies, partnerships
• Companies formed via division, separation, or merger
• Branch, representative office, and business-location registration (plus notification of overseas branches/rep offices)

A slightly longer 4 working days applies to terminating a branch/rep office/business location or dissolving a company entirely.

🚗 Real-life analogy: this is the legal equivalent of swapping a multi-stop road trip for a direct flight. Same destination, dramatically less time in transit.

4️⃣ A brand-new map: 70 high-tech fields flagged for priority investment

Decision 23/2026/QĐ-TTg rolls out an official list of 70 priority high-tech fields plus 100 encouraged high-tech products, covering AI, big data, cloud computing, semiconductors, biotechnology, new materials, new energy, environmental technology, and digital-transformation tech.

For businesses operating in these fields, this list is a practical signal, not just a formality:

• Potential tax, land, and credit incentives
• Support for R&D, technology transfer, and workforce training
• A reference point authorities use to prioritize investment projects

5️⃣ Fewer hoops: simplified procedures under Resolution 66.18/2026/NQ-CP

Several overlapping checks get streamlined:

• No repeat fire-safety acceptance testing for works, items, or vehicles already design-appraised by the police on fire-prevention grounds.
• No fire-safety acceptance required for works/vehicles holding a design-appraisal certificate that hadn't yet reached the acceptance-approval stage.
• Simplified dossier requirements for fire-safety design appraisal of technical/construction drawings within economic-technical reports and post-base-design construction designs.
• No more eligibility review for businesses that self-train their own occupational safety and hygiene programs.
• No more waiting on a state-issued confirmation certificate for declaring the use of machines/equipment/materials with strict safety requirements — businesses still must declare to the local Department of Home Affairs (Sở Nội vụ) before use, but no longer sit in a queue for a certificate first.

🚗 Real-life analogy: if your car's brakes were already inspected and certified last month, you shouldn't need a second, redundant brake inspection this month just to use the same brakes. That's exactly the kind of duplication being trimmed here.

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🤔 Did you know? Quick legal trivia 🤔

• The conditional-business-sector list isn't a "set once, forget forever" document — Vietnam periodically reviews and trims it as part of an ongoing administrative-reform push, and this 56-sector cut is one of the larger reductions in recent years.
• "Micro-enterprise" status for CIT purposes in Vietnam typically hinges on revenue and/or labor thresholds, and the method of calculating CIT (flat % of revenue vs. taxable income) — not just size — is what decides whether the financial-statement exemption applies.
• A national list of priority high-tech fields, like the new 70-item list, is a common policy tool worldwide for steering investment incentives toward strategic sectors — Vietnam's version explicitly folds in fields like semiconductors and AI, signaling where the next wave of incentives is likely headed.

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📝 Quick self-quiz — are you boon-fluent yet?

1. How many conditional business sectors remain after the July 2026 cut? A. 198 B. 142 C. 156 D. 70

2. Which micro-enterprises must still file annual financial statements within 90 days of fiscal year-end? A. Those paying CIT as a % of revenue B. Those paying CIT on taxable income C. All micro-enterprises D. None

3. How many working days does standard business registration now take in Hanoi? A. 1 B. 2 C. 4 D. 7

4. True or false: businesses using machines with strict safety requirements no longer need to declare anything to any authority.

5. How many high-tech fields are on the new priority investment list? A. 56 B. 70 C. 100 D. 142

Answer key: 1-B · 2-B · 3-B (4 days only for termination/dissolution cases) · 4-False (declaration to Sở Nội vụ is still required, just no certificate wait) · 5-B 🎉

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💡 Practical tips for businesses navigating these five changes

• Re-check your sector against the new 142-line list. A condition you've been compliance-planning around might simply not exist anymore.
• Confirm your CIT calculation method before skipping financial statements. The exemption rides on how you pay CIT, not on how small you feel.
• If you're registering in Hanoi, build your launch timeline around the new 2-day (or 4-day, for closures) windows — it changes how fast you can realistically go to market.
• If your business touches AI, biotech, semiconductors, or similar fields, study the 70-item list closely — it's your roadmap to potential tax, land, and credit incentives.
• If you've already passed a fire-safety design appraisal, don't assume you automatically need a second acceptance round — check whether your case now qualifies for the streamlined path.

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🌿 A quick detour into nature's version of this rule

Evolution runs a similar audit, just on a much longer timescale. Vestigial traits — structures that once served a purpose but no longer carry their evolutionary weight — tend to shrink or disappear over generations, because maintaining unnecessary structures costs energy for no survival benefit. Regulatory pruning works the same way: conditions and procedures that no longer serve their original protective purpose eventually get trimmed, because maintaining them costs businesses time and resources for no real public benefit. Both systems are, in their own way, optimizing for "no unnecessary weight." 🦎

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🗣️ Over to you

Of these five changes, which one actually moves the needle for your business — the sector cuts, the lighter micro-enterprise filing, Hanoi's faster registration, the high-tech incentive list, or the simplified fire/labor-safety procedures? Drop your answer in the comments — and if you've already felt the effect of one of these changes firsthand, tell us how it went. Know a founder who needs this roundup? Tag them. 📣

#VietnamLaw #BusinessReform2026 #DoingBusinessInVietnam #SmallBusinessVietnam #HanoiBusiness #HighTechVietnam #CorporateCompliance #DeluluVN #NgocPrinny #LegalEducation

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🚨 Fun but serious: a brief legal disclaimer 🚨

Hey there, legal explorer! 🕵️‍♀️ Before you close this tab —

• This article is a map, not a teleporter 🗺️ — it'll orient you, but it won't file your paperwork for you.
• Every business's journey is its own unicorn 🦄 — your eligibility for any of these five boons depends on your specific facts.
• For real-world quests, summon a professional legal wizard 🧙‍♀️ — may we suggest Thầy Điệp & Associates Law Firm, the firm that reviews what gets published here.
• Reading this doesn't make you a lawyer, the same way watching Top Gun doesn't make you a pilot. ✈️😉

Full disclaimer details: ngocprinny.blogspot.com/2024/08/disclaimer.html

#LegalInfo #delulu.vn #NotLegalAdvice #ConsultAPro #NgocPrinny

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💝 Support your legal ninja's wellness fund! 🍵

Enjoyed this roundup of good news (a rare genre in legal writing, we know)? Every article like this one runs on:

• Hours of digging through resolutions, circulars, and decisions 📚
• 10+ years of hands-on legal expertise ⚖️
• A questionable amount of pun-crafting 📝
• And an even more questionable amount of herbal tea 🍵

If this post saved you some research time, consider treating this ninja to a green tea →. It keeps the puns flowing, the research thorough, and the ninja caffeinated enough for the next regulatory deep dive. 🌱

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More about the author and the DELULU world: delulu.vn/about-2/

Author: Nguyễn Lê Bảo Ngọc (Ngọc Prinny) Reviewed by: Lawyer Lê Thị Kim Dung and Lawyer Nguyễn Văn Điệp, Thầy Điệp & Associates Law Firm

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And a little closing wish, sized to whenever you're reading this:

🇬🇧 Whatever time zone you're in — may your next registration dossier sail through in record time. 

🇯🇵 いつ読んでいても、心穏やかな一日を。 

🇫🇷 Et où que vous soyez, que la bureaucratie vous soit légère. ☘️

Two's Company, Three's a... Union Due? 🦊⚖️ Does a One-Employee Company Really Owe Trade Union Fees?

 

📖 Etymology corner, before we dive in

The word "union" comes from the Latin unio — "oneness," from unus, meaning "one." The word "due" comes from Old French deu, rooted in Latin debere — "to owe."

So, etymologically speaking, a "union due" is literally "something owed because of oneness." Which is delightfully ironic for today's topic, because the whole legal puzzle is this: if your company is about as "one" as it gets — one unpaid director, one employee — does that oneness still create something owed? 🤔

Let's find out, Ngọc Prinny -style: no drama, just the mechanism. 🦊

🧐 The case in a nutshell

Meet Two's Company Ltd. — a real-world-style micro business with exactly two humans on the org chart:

• Director Noah Payne — runs the show, signs the contracts, takes home... nothing. He draws zero salary. (Yes, "No Pay" is doing a lot of work in that name. We don't apologize.)
• Employee Wendy Wage — the one person actually on payroll, earning a real salary and enrolled in compulsory social insurance (BHXH).

Two's Company Ltd. wants to know: do we have to pay kinh phí công đoàn (trade union dues)? 💸

This isn't a courtroom drama — there's no judge banging a gavel here. It's a regulatory question answered by Vietnam's Trade Union Law 2024 (Luật Công đoàn 2024), Decree 105/2026/NĐ-CP, and the Social Insurance Law 2024. But it does have a classic "everyone assumes X, the rulebook says Y" twist — so let's run it like a trial anyway. 😏

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🧐 Exhibit A: "Surely We're Too Small for This" (the common first instinct)

Most micro-business owners' gut reaction goes something like:

• "We're basically a two-person operation — surely the union doesn't care about us."
• "Our director doesn't even take a salary, so there's no 'wage fund' to tax, right?"
• "We don't even have a union chapter here — why would we pay union fees?"

Verdict on the first instinct: not quite right. Size and the director's unpaid status are red herrings. 🐟

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⚖️ The Actual Ruling (straight from the statute books, not a courtroom)

Here's the rule, stripped to its logical core. Two conditions, both required, decide everything:

1. Is there an actual employer-employee labor relationship (per Article 3, Labor Code 2019) — i.e., someone hired under a labor contract, not just an owner running their own show?
2. Is that worker subject to compulsory social insurance?

If both boxes are checked, the company owes kinh phí công đoàn = 2% of the wage fund used as the basis for that worker's compulsory social insurance contributions (Article 29, Trade Union Law 2024). It applies regardless of headcount — one employee is just as "due" as one hundred. 📊

Now here's the twist that resolves Two's Company Ltd.'s case:

• Director Noah Payne is technically required to participate in compulsory social insurance — Vietnam's Social Insurance Law 2024 specifically pulls unpaid company managers, Directors, and General Directors into mandatory coverage (Article 2). But since he draws no salary, there's no wage figure to calculate dues from. Zero salary → zero contribution to the union-dues base. His "oneness" generates nothing owed. 🫥
• Employee Wendy Wage, on the other hand, does have a labor contract and does have a salary subject to mandatory social insurance. That single fact is enough to flip the switch.

So: Two's Company Ltd. owes union dues — calculated solely on Wendy's wage base, not Noah's. ✅

• What would make them exempt instead? Only dissolution or bankruptcy proceedings under Article 11 of Decree 105/2026/NĐ-CP qualify for a dues waiver. "We're tiny" or "our boss isn't paid" are not on that list — and nowhere in the regulations is there a small-business carve-out for this.

Here's the logic mapped out:

The takeaway from that flow above: the trigger is the relationship, not the size of the company or the director's paycheck.

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🏠🚗 Real-life analogies, because legal logic always lands better with everyday stuff

• 🏠 The empty house vs. the rented house. Own a house and live in it alone? No tenant, no rental income, no landlord registration obligations kick in. The moment you bring in one paying tenant, the obligations switch on — it doesn't matter if it's a mansion or a studio. Same logic: it's the relationship (tenant present or not) that flips the switch, not the size of the house.
• 🚗 The garaged car vs. the car on the road. Mandatory liability insurance isn't about how many cars you own — it's about whether a car is actually registered and driven. A car sitting untouched in your garage isn't "in traffic." The moment it's on the road, insurance is compulsory. Director Noah is the car in the garage (technically covered by social insurance rules, but generating no usable "wage" output); Wendy is the car on the road — actively driving the obligation forward.

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🤔 Did you know? Quick legal trivia 🤔

• Vietnam's trade union dues rate has held steady at 2% of the compulsory social insurance wage base for years — it's one of the more stable figures in an otherwise frequently-updated labor law landscape.
• The Trade Union Law was itself amended in 2025 alongside changes to the Vietnam Fatherland Front Law, Youth Law, and Grassroots Democracy Law — a reminder that in Vietnam, the trade union system isn't just a workplace-rights body; it's woven into a broader socio-political organizational structure, which is part of why its funding mechanism (employer-paid dues, not just member dues) is broader than in many other countries.
• Unpaid company managers being swept into mandatory social insurance is a relatively unusual design choice — most countries link compulsory coverage strictly to actual wage payment. Vietnam's 2024 Social Insurance Law deliberately closed that gap for business managers and legal representatives.

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📝 Quick self-quiz — are you union-dues-fluent yet?

1. A company has only its unpaid director and zero employees. Does it owe union dues?
   A. Yes B. No C. Only above a certain revenue D. Depends on registered capital
2. What percentage of the mandatory social insurance wage base is used to calculate union dues?
   A. 1% B. 1.5% C. 2% D. 3%
3. Which of these is NOT a valid exemption from union dues under Decree 105/2026/NĐ-CP?
   A. Company dissolution B. Company bankruptcy C. Having only one employee D. Both A and B are valid
4. True or false: an unpaid director's mandatory social insurance status adds to the wage fund used to calculate union dues.

Answer key: 1-B · 2-C · 3-C · 4-False 🎉

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Here's our office's resident cast for this case study — Director Noah Payne, halo and all, next to Employee Wendy Wage, whose paycheck is doing all the legal heavy lifting:

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💡 Practical tips for businesses in Two's Company Ltd.'s shoes

• Track headcount and contract types, not company size. The instant you bring on your first employee under a labor contract subject to mandatory social insurance, the 2% clock starts ticking — whether you have 1 employee or 100.
• Don't let "we're tiny" or "the boss isn't paid" become a compliance assumption. Neither factor appears anywhere in the legal exemption list.
• Keep clean invoices and non-cash payment records for dues paid. Under Article 9 of the 2025 Corporate Income Tax Law, union dues are deductible only if they're an actual business-related expense backed by proper invoices/non-cash payment documentation.
• If you're winding down, check Article 11 of Decree 105/2026/NĐ-CP — dissolution and bankruptcy are the only doors to a dues waiver, and they come with their own procedure, not a self-declared "too small" excuse.

📅 Payment method & deadlines (Article 4, Decree 105/2026/NĐ-CP) — bullet-point version

• Monthly, alongside compulsory social insurance payments, for: enterprises, cooperatives, cooperative unions, non-fully-state-funded public service units, foreign organizations/representative offices employing Vietnamese workers, and most other employing entities.
• Monthly or quarterly (by registration with the union) for agricultural, forestry, fishery, and salt-production businesses that pay wages by production cycle.
• Deadline: last day of the following month for monthly payers; last day of the month following the quarter for quarterly payers.

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🌿 A quick detour into nature's version of this rule

Biology runs on a strikingly similar principle. A lone organism living off-grid owes nothing to any ecosystem's social contract — no exchange, no obligation. But the moment a relationship of dependency forms — say, a clownfish moving into a sea anemone — an exchange kicks in: shelter for cleaning services, a tiny mutual "due" paid in services rather than dong. The obligation isn't triggered by the size of the reef. It's triggered by the relationship existing at all. Vietnamese labor law, as it turns out, runs on the same logic as a coral reef. 🐠

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🗣️ Over to you

Have you run into surprises like this with union dues, social insurance, or labor compliance for a micro or small business? Drop your story in the comments below — let's compare notes (and maybe commiserate over a cup of tea ☕). Know another tiny-but-mighty business wrestling with the "are we too small for this rule" question? Tag them — this one's worth sharing.

#VietnamLaw #TradeUnionDues #KinhPhiCongDoan #LaborLawVietnam #SmallBusinessVietnam #CorporateCompliance #DeluluVN #NgocPrinny #LegalEducation #HRVietnam

🚨 Fun but serious: a brief legal disclaimer 🚨

Hey there, legal explorer! 🕵️‍♀️ Before you close this tab —

• This article is a map, not a teleporter 🗺️ — it'll orient you, but it won't zap your specific compliance headache away.
• Every legal journey is its own unicorn 🦄 — your company's facts may shift the analysis.
• For real-world quests, summon a professional legal wizard 🧙‍♀️ — may we suggest Thầy Điệp & Associates Law Firm, the firm that actually reviews what gets published here.
• Reading this doesn't make you a lawyer, the same way watching Top Gun doesn't make you a pilot. ✈️😉

Full disclaimer details: ngocprinny.blogspot.com/2024/08/disclaimer.html

#LegalInfo #delulu.vn #NotLegalAdvice #ConsultAPro #NgocPrinny

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💝 Support your legal ninja's wellness fund! 🍵

Enjoyed Ngọc Prinny's witty legal wisdom today? Every article like this one runs on:

• Hours of digging through statutes and decrees 📚
• 10+ years of hands-on legal expertise ⚖️
• A questionable amount of pun-crafting 📝
• And an even more questionable amount of herbal tea 🍵

If this post helped you navigate Vietnam's regulatory maze, consider treating this ninja to a green tea →. It keeps the puns flowing, the research thorough, and the ninja caffeinated enough for the next deep dive. 🌱

---

More about the author and the DELULU world: delulu.vn/about-2/

Author: Nguyễn Lê Bảo Ngọc (Ngọc Prinny)
Reviewed by: Lawyer Lê Thị Kim Dung and Lawyer Nguyễn Văn Điệp, Thầy Điệp & Associates Law Firm

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And as always — a little closing wish, sized to whenever you're reading this:

🇬🇧 Whatever time zone you're in — may your paperwork be light and your tea be strong.
🇯🇵 いつ読んでいても、心穏やかな一日を。
🇫🇷 Et où que vous soyez, que vos prochaines démarches administratives soient douces. ☘️

🤖📋 Training Your AI on Other People's Data: What Vietnam's New IP Law Says You Can (and Can't) Do

By Nguyễn Lê Bảo Ngọc (Ngọc Prinny) · Reviewed by Ls. Lê Thị Kim Dung & Ls. Nguyễn Văn Điệp

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📖 Etymology Corner: "Intellectual" — The Mind's Own Work

The word "intellectual" traces to the Latin intellectus — the act of understanding, perception, from intelligere (to understand, to choose between). When we speak of intellectual property, we are speaking of property that originates in the mind — in a deliberate act of creative understanding. The legal question at the heart of this article is genuinely philosophical: when an AI system learns from human creative work, is that learning a tribute to the mind that created it, or is it a form of taking without giving back? Vietnam's amended IP Law 2025 has decided it can be both — depending on what you do and how you do it. 🧠📜

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🎬 In a Nutshell

Every AI system needs training data. Language models need text. Image generators need images. Medical AI systems need patient records and research papers. The question for every Vietnamese business building or deploying AI is: where can that data legally come from?

The answer just got clearer — and more conditional — with Clause 5, Article 7 of the amended IP Law 2025 (Law 131/2025/QH15). This provision introduces an explicit text and data mining exception for AI training: a legal basis for using IP-protected works to train AI systems, subject to three cumulative conditions. Miss any one of them, and the legal protection disappears.

This post breaks down what those conditions are, what the AI-specific IP ownership rules say, and what Vietnam's state policy on IP tells us about the direction of travel.

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📋 Section 1: The Three-Condition Rule — All or Nothing

Article 7, Clause 5 of the IP Law 2025 creates the following permission:

Organisations and individuals may use texts and data relating to IP-protected subject matter that has been lawfully published and made accessible to the public, for the purposes of scientific research, testing, and training artificial intelligence systems — provided that such use does not unreasonably affect the rights and legitimate interests of authors and IP rights holders.

Three conditions. All mandatory. Here they are in plain language:

Condition 1 — Lawfully published and publicly accessible: The data must have been published through lawful means and be accessible to the public. This is not just "available on the internet." It means the data was legitimately released into the public domain or made genuinely accessible — not scraped from paywalled sources, not extracted from databases the user doesn't have access rights to, not pulled from private repositories. If accessing the data would itself require bypassing a paywall, a licence restriction, or any form of access control, the data is not "publicly accessible" in the required sense.

Condition 2 — Correct purpose: The use must be for scientific research (nghiên cứu khoa học), testing (thử nghiệm), or AI training (huấn luyện hệ thống trí tuệ nhân tạo). These are the three permitted purposes — and they are listed exhaustively, not illustratively. Using data to train a model that will then be commercialised raises questions about whether the training falls within these purposes or goes beyond them. This is an area where the implementing Government decree (still pending) will be critical.

Condition 3 — No unreasonable harm to IP rights holders: The use must not "unreasonably affect" the rights and legitimate interests of authors and IP owners. This is the most interpretively flexible of the three conditions — and therefore the most legally dangerous. "Unreasonable" is a proportionality standard: some degree of impact on an author's market or interests may be acceptable; systematic substitution for the original work, or training that enables mass reproduction of protected works without licence, is unlikely to be considered reasonable. The three-step test familiar from international copyright law is the interpretive framework lurking behind this language.

The additional rule for copyright-protected data: For texts and data that are subject to copyright and related rights specifically, compliance with all three conditions above is necessary but not sufficient. Additional requirements will be set out in a Government decree — which has not yet been issued. Until that decree is published, businesses using copyright-protected data for AI training are operating in a zone of residual regulatory uncertainty even if they satisfy the three main conditions.

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🏛️ Section 2: Who Owns What an AI Creates?

Separately from the training data question, the amended IP Law 2025 also addresses a question that has plagued IP lawyers globally: if an AI system creates something — a text, an image, a musical composition — who owns it?

Article 6 of the IP Law 2025 (as amended) adds an important new provision: the Government will set out rules on the arising and establishment of IP rights in cases where the subject matter was created using an AI system.

This is a significant policy signal. Vietnam is not ignoring the question — but it is delegating the answer to subordinate legislation. The current law does not directly declare that AI can or cannot be an author or IP rights holder. It leaves that determination for the Government's implementing decree.

What we do know from the existing framework:

Copyright (quyền tác giả) arises automatically when a work is created and expressed in a tangible form — regardless of whether it has been published or registered. The question of whether an AI-generated work qualifies for copyright protection turns on whether the creation process involves a human author in a meaningful way.

Industrial property rights (patents, trademarks, design rights) are established through formal registration — and the question of who may register an AI-generated invention remains open pending the implementing decree.

Trade secrets and well-known marks follow their own logic (use-based for the latter; lawful acquisition and maintenance of confidentiality for the former) and are less directly affected by the AI authorship question.

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🏛️ Section 3: State Policy — The Direction of Travel

Article 8 of the IP Law 2025 sets out the Vietnamese state's IP policy — and it contains several provisions that signal where things are headed for AI-related IP:

The state policy emphasises promoting innovation while balancing the interests of rights holders with the public interest. Financial support, tax incentives, and preferential investment treatment are available for IP creation, protection, and exploitation — including for IP developed using AI systems, once the implementing decree clarifies the rules.

There is explicit support for helping Vietnamese individuals and organisations value, transfer, and contribute IP rights as capital contributions — relevant for AI companies whose primary asset is trained models and datasets. The policy also encourages cooperation between the state, researchers, S&T organisations, and enterprises on IP sharing — a framework that could apply to publicly-funded AI training datasets.

The emphasis on developing an "integrated and efficient IP ecosystem" and investing in IP management and enforcement bodies suggests that the regulatory infrastructure for AI-specific IP compliance is being built in parallel with the substantive rules.

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🏠🚗 Real-Life Examples

Example 1 — The legal training set: ✅ A Vietnamese legaltech startup wants to train a contract analysis model. It uses publicly available court decisions from the official judicial portal (free, publicly accessible, lawfully published), academic legal articles from open-access journals, and government gazette text. All three conditions are met: lawfully published, publicly accessible, used for AI training, and using official and open-access materials does not unreasonably harm the original publishers. Permitted — though they should monitor the Government decree on copyright-protected data.

Example 2 — The scraped news corpus: ⚠️ A media monitoring company scrapes the full archives of 50 Vietnamese news websites — including articles behind subscription paywalls — to train a news summarisation AI. The paywall content is not "publicly accessible" in the required sense. Condition 1 fails for the paywalled content. The company faces IP infringement risk for using that data, regardless of whether the training itself is for an AI system.

Example 3 — The music training dataset: 🎵 A Vietnamese music streaming startup wants to train a generative music AI using its catalogue of licensed Vietnamese pop music. The music is lawfully published and publicly accessible (it's on the platform). The use is for AI training. But does training a generative model that will produce music similar in style to the original works "unreasonably affect" the rights of songwriters and labels? This is exactly the grey zone where the Government decree on copyright-protected data will be critical. Until that decree is issued, the legal risk is real.

Example 4 — The synthetic dataset: ✅ An AI company generates its own synthetic training data — text created by its own employees, images commissioned from freelancers with appropriate work-for-hire agreements. No third-party IP is involved. The three-condition framework doesn't apply because there's no third-party IP being used. Clean from an IP perspective — though data protection and personal data considerations may apply separately.

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🤔 Did You Know?

The text and data mining exception in Vietnam's amended IP Law 2025 is directly modelled on similar provisions in the European Union's Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (Article 4, CDSM Directive 2019), which also allows text and data mining for research and commercial purposes, subject to rights holders' ability to opt out. Vietnam's version is slightly narrower — it does not explicitly include a commercial TDM exception separate from the research one — but the conceptual framework is the same. Vietnam is aligning its IP framework with international norms at a moment when the global legal landscape for AI training data is still being actively litigated in courts from the US to the EU. 🌐

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🌿 Law in Nature — The Pollination Parallel

The text and data mining exception works like the legal framework governing bee pollination and honey production. Bees collect nectar from flowers — they "use" the flower's resources. But the flower does not suffer unreasonably: the bees also pollinate, the ecosystem benefits, and the flower continues to produce. The law doesn't require bees to pay royalties on nectar. But if a commercial beekeeper were to destroy the flowers to extract nectar directly — causing genuine harm to the plant's reproductive capacity — that would be a different matter. Vietnam's AI training exception draws a similar line: using publicly accessible data for AI training is the bee collecting nectar. Systematically replacing or undermining the original works is the beekeeper destroying the flowers. 🐝🌸

💡 Tips for Businesses Using Data to Train AI

Audit your training data sources now: Before your next training run, document where every dataset came from, whether it was lawfully published and publicly accessible, and whether you have any additional licences or terms of service governing its use. Build this into your ML pipeline as standard practice.

Purpose matters — document it: If your AI system is trained for internal research and then commercially deployed, ensure the documentation reflects the training purpose accurately. The exemption covers training, not the subsequent commercial exploitation of the model. The line between the two is where legal risk concentrates.

Copyrighted data needs extra care: Until the Government decree implementing Article 7(5) for copyright-protected material is published, any training data that carries copyright (essentially anything creative) should be treated with additional caution. Consider whether licences or opt-in arrangements with content owners are available.

Watch the Government decree pipeline: Article 6's provision on AI-generated IP and Article 7(5)'s requirement for a Government decree on copyright data are the two most significant pending pieces of the puzzle. Subscribe to updates from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Justice.

Consider synthetic data and open-licensed sources: Training on data you own, data generated internally, or data released under permissive open licences (Creative Commons, government open data portals) substantially reduces IP risk. It also builds a more defensible training data provenance record.

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📝 Quick Quiz — AI Training Data IQ Test

Question 1: Under Art. 7(5) IP Law 2025, which of the following is a permitted use of third-party data to train an AI?

a) Using paywalled academic papers scraped without a subscription · b) Using open-access government legal texts to train a legal AI for research purposes, without substituting the original works · c) Using any data found on the internet, as long as it's for AI training · d) Using licensed music to train a commercial generative music AI (pending the Government decree)

Question 2: For copyright-protected training data, what additional requirement applies?

a) Nothing — the three conditions are sufficient · b) Compliance with a forthcoming Government decree providing additional rules · c) Explicit consent from every rights holder · d) Registration with the Ministry of Science and Technology

Question 3: The IP Law 2025 directly answers the question of whether AI-generated works can be copyrighted. True or false?

a) True — AI cannot be an author · b) True — AI-generated works are automatically in the public domain · c) False — the law delegates this question to a Government decree to be issued · d) True — AI can hold copyright if registered

Question 4: Which condition is most likely to require case-by-case legal analysis rather than a clear yes/no answer?

a) Condition 1 — lawfully published · b) Condition 2 — correct purpose · c) Condition 3 — no unreasonable harm to IP rights holders · d) All conditions are equally clear

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🗣️ Call to Action

Are you building AI products in Vietnam, managing a data science team, or advising on AI compliance? Is your company already using third-party data for model training — and have you mapped that against the new IP Law 2025 framework? 💬

Drop your questions and real-world scenarios in the comments — Ngọc Prinny reads every one. And share this post with your engineering leads, legal team, and anyone responsible for ML compliance. The rules are here. The Government decrees are coming. The time to build good data governance habits is before enforcement begins. 📤

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🚨 Fun But Serious: A Brief Legal Disclaimer 🚨

Hey there, legal explorer! 🕵️‍♂️ Before you go...

• This article explains the current statutory framework — the Government decrees implementing Art. 7(5) and Art. 6 have not yet been issued and will add important detail 🗺️
• AI and IP law is evolving rapidly — this is one of the fastest-moving areas of legal practice globally 🦄
• For compliance advice specific to your AI training pipeline, please consult a qualified IP lawyer 🧙‍♂️ — may we suggest Thầy Điệp & Associates Law Firm
• Need certified translations of technical documents or IP registration materials? Thu Thiem Notary Office is ready 🖊️

Full disclaimer: ngocprinny.blogspot.com/2024/08/disclaimer.html

#LegalInfo #delulu.vn #NotLegalAdvice #ConsultAPro #NgocPrinny

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💝 Support Your Legal Ninja's Wellness Fund! 🍵

Every article is powered by:

• Hours of deep-dive research into IP law, AI policy, and comparative international frameworks 📚
• 10+ years of legal expertise ⚖️
• Creative storytelling that makes IP law actually readable for tech teams 📝
• And an extraordinary volume of herbal tea 🍵

If these posts have helped you navigate Vietnam's legal landscape, consider buying me a green tea ☕ Your support keeps this ninja sharp for the next article! 🌱

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If you're reading this at night — sweet dreams, and may your training data always be lawfully sourced! 🌙✨

If you're reading this in the morning — wishing you a productive day, clean datasets, and a Government decree that arrives sooner rather than later! ☀️🤖

If you're reading this at lunch — enjoy every bite, and may your model's loss function converge as smoothly as this meal goes down! 🍱📉

Whenever you're reading this — may your IP be protected, your training data be clean, and your AI be compliant! 🔬⚖️

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Author: Nguyễn Lê Bảo Ngọc (Ngọc Prinny) | Reviewed by Ls. Lê Thị Kim Dung & Ls. Nguyễn Văn Điệp

 #AILaw #IntellectualProperty #VietnamTech #NgocPrinny #IPLaw2025 #AITraining #SởHữuTríTuệ #delulu_vn #VietnamAI #TechLaw #DataMining #MachineLearning #VietnamLaw2026