ST25, the story of trademark and trademark’s protection

ST25 rice variety features some good characteristics including salt tolerance, resistance to rice blast disease grade 2 and blight disease, fall resistance, high adaptability to the external environment. It can easily adapt to the shrimp-rice rotation model at some coastal localities in the Mekong delta.

The quality of the variety has been affirmed in the world market as it topped the prize for best rice in the world in 2019, and was ranked second at the 2020 World's Best Rice Contest in the US.

This has proved the superior quality of Vietnamese rice. ST25 is good in quality and beautiful in outlook, the long-grain rice white and translucent. After cooking, it has smelled of pineapple, sweet, soft, unbroken but longer like lines in the rice cooker.

With series of strong points, many enterprises have proposed Ho Quang Cua - author of ST25 rice variety to franchise totally or partly the business of the rice seed. However, Cua’s desire is for the state, which can manage and expand the rice variety.

Recently, Cua authorized the PAN Group to monopolize the exploitation, trading, and use of the name of ST25 rice in the major rice export markets of Vietnam including the US, Europe, and Australia.

However, ST25 rice was registered for trademark protection in the US and Australia by several enterprises recently, making a potential impact on Vietnam’s rice brand.

It is obvious that when a product is brought to the maker, it can integrate multiple subjects of intellectual property rights.

For example, when it comes to rice, being sold in the market, we can mention the rights of the grain and the variety at first. Secondly, we can refer to the geographical indication rights of products, and the third, it is about trademark rights and the next should be patent rights.

Let take the golden rice plant as an example, as many as 70 different patents were adopted throughout the genetically modified process to create a rice variety with high beta carotene.

As a result, there are different types of intellectual property in products, which are sold in the market have different stipulations, management, and rights establishment.

In the story of ST25 rice, the registration of plant protection and trademark protection are two independent issues, but there is a very close relationship with each other.

Referring to the plant variety of ST25, it is the right of a new plant variety or rice plant in particular. However, when we can produce the grains from the ST25 rice plant and bring it to the market, the producers have to put a trademark on it. So the registration of a new plant variety and trademark registration are two successive processes for us to lead to a common process of a value or value chain in rice products in the market.

Therefore, if we do not master both of these registration processes, it will lead to something happens for ST25, which is registered in Vietnam, but not in the United States. The corresponding trademark registered to use the very name of the rice variety itself for registration in the United States creating a conflict of commercial use of the rice brand.

 “We need to see the story in nature as we have to define that do we own this brand? We mentioned the intellectual property of a territorial nature. It does not mean we register the rights in Vietnam, it is either available in the US. This is the most concern issue that businesses and ownerships that create the products, which are sold overseas need to know”, said Mr. Tran Le Hong - Deputy Director-General of Department of National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (under the Ministry of Science and Technology).

If the ST25 rice variety is registered the rights in Vietnam, the producers have a so-called specific variety brand, ST25 in detail, this is the name of the seedling that is registered at the Department of Cultivation of Vietnam. But to make it recognizable for protection overseas, the producers also need to register for protection in the US.

“As I looked upon the website of the US Department of Agriculture, there are around 152 rice varieties are registered for protection in the US, unfortunately, our ST25 is excluded,” Hong says.

Trademark is a foundation to develop the brand. May those firms use accidentally or intentionally the name of the rice variety to register the trademark and it struggles the businesses of ST25 rice. Regularly, the name of the variety is not used for trademark registration. However, it should be remembered that, the ST25 variety itself has yet to be registered in the US, its brand has yet to be officially recognized in the country leading to a bottleneck when someone wants to ask the US to reject the ST25 trademark protection from unproven firms.

In this case, according to Mr. Hong, “we have advantages as the name of the ST25 line has been used widely in Vietnam and was recognized around the world following the voting of World’s Best Rice in 2019. As the brand name was used and widely known around the world together with the convincible and basic evidence, I believe that the US patent and trademark side would consider accepting the protection of ST25”.