According to information released on 31 July 2026, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IP Vietnam) published its first three representative cases in which trademark registrations were successfully invalidated on bad-faith grounds. The move appears to mark a more concrete stage in the application of Vietnam’s amended IP Law and also comes amid continuing US scrutiny of bad-faith trademark registrations in the country.
The practical importance lies less in the number of cases than in the evidentiary direction they provide. Foreign brand owners may now have a clearer basis for relying on an applicant’s prior dealings, knowledge of the mark, filing pattern and other surrounding conduct, rather than depending almost entirely on proof of local well-known status. That may lower the evidentiary burden in some opposition and invalidation actions, but it does not remove the need for a disciplined record: companies should still preserve commercial correspondence, evidence of earlier use, distribution records and facts showing how the applicant became aware of the mark.
