VietNamNet Bridge – Four years after the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works took effect in Vietnam in October 2004, copyright violations are not happening less frequently than before.

The “151 quick ideas to increase sales” book.

The latest copyright infringement case is a foreign language teaching centre using pirated copies of textbooks of First News Company. The violators admitted their violation but an experienced copyright negotiator commented that if First News’ foreign partner sued First News for losing the copyright, First News could have to pay a substantial compensation.

Copyright violations are not only as rampant as they were four years ago, before the convention went into effect, there are also new “styles” of copyright piracy.

Young Publishing House got the copyright of a book entitled “151 quick ideas to increase sales”. Before it could translate this book into Vietnamese, it saw the Vietnamese version at nation-wide bookstores, published by another agency. A representative of the Young Publishing House called the Vietnamese person listed on the cover as the author of this book. This person simply said he wrote the book.

Changing a book title when it is translated into Vietnamese or inventing a Vietnamese author for a book like in this case are new tricks of some publishers.

Many small publishers sometimes sell book publishing licences for a few hundred US dollars and they turn a “deaf ear” to the books published under their licences.

According to the Young Publishing House, since 2007, 40 of its books have been pirated. Both First News and this publishing house could do nothing but announce the number or the book titles of pirated products, as they can’t afford to follow lawsuits against violators.

Vo Tien