The following article was written by our partner in charge of intellectual property and technology, Nguyen Thi Hong Anh and published in the Vietnam Investment Review website on 23 June 2021. No doubt intellectual property is an extremely important asset of business entities. Good strategies for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) [...]
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, are all the rage at the moment. In 2020, SPACs raised $83 billion in proceeds from their IPOs and already in the first quarter of 2021 they raised $88 billion. This is big money and many companies, particularly offshore companies, are keen on being acquired by an SPAC as [...]
As I've written before, Vietnam currently views cryptocurrency as a prohibited form of payment (see Cryptocurrency in Vietnam). The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has repeatedly made it clear that it does not recognize cryptocurrency or any digital currency as legal tender. Although a recent program initiated a pilot program for e-money (see Mobile Money [...]
by Steven Jacob, Foreign Associate While I have written largely about Fintech issues in this blog, the scope of my responsibilities extends to other areas involving technology and media. This week, therefore, I am going to write on a subject that has caused a bit of a stir in Vietnam regarding the regulations that just [...]
I wrote a couple weeks ago about the interest rate cap on loans as applicable to P2P lending in Vietnam (see Interest Rates for P2P Lending in Vietnam) in which I discussed the problem we've seen with P2P lenders being accused of criminally exceeding that cap through the application of fees on loans. Another problem [...]
According to an article in VN Express International's website (see Personal data leak affects thousands of Vietnamese) the news of a major leak of personal data was announced. (Other articles covered the news in the Vietnamese language, but for purposes of discussion, the English language story will work best.) The data, which comprised 17 GBs [...]
As a relative newcomer to fintech, and with limited experience working with peer-to-peer lending (P2P Lending), I thought that the scope of such lending was similar to crowdfunding. Individuals could go to a P2P Lending website, lodge a request for loans, and be matched with individual lenders. I didn't realize that the concept of P2P [...]
By Ton That Hoang, Legal Assistant Background On 01 April 2021, the Government issued Decree No. 49/2021/ND-CP (“Decree 49”) amending and supplementing Decree No. 100/2015/ND-CP (“Decree 100”) on the development and management of social housing, which came into effect immediately upon promulgation. Despite its quick adoption problems with Decree 49 have been discovered. This Special [...]
by Steven Jacob, Foreign Associate Last week I examined the four types of e-commerce websites that are allowed to operate in Vietnam (see Some Issues on E-Commerce in Vietnam). For each type, there is either a notification or registration requirement before the website can commence operations. This week I wanted to discuss the requirements for [...]
by Steven Jacob, Foreign Associate Random E-Commerce Provisions in Vietnam I wrote a blog post last week about a company that got in trouble with the law. And though my information was based on publicly available newspaper reports, the company also happened to be a client so the post was vetoed by management. As such, [...]