How and what are the Vietnamese people learning about intellectual property ("IP") law? In the last generation, Vietnam has received over $80 billion of foreign investment, most of it since joining the World Trade Organization and revising its legal codes to put IP law on the books. In action, law is not the source of most social regulation in Vietnam, and a concept of ideas as property seems foreign among the pirated DVDs and unlicensed software everywhere in Hồ Chà Minh City. Nevertheless, domestic and global brands proliferate in Vietnam, and global corporate employers introduce their habitual ways of talking and acting: ways that reflect certain proprietary relationships around ideas, and a place for law to organize those relationships. What is this cultural contact doing to the place of IP in Vietnamese society? And what might it be doing to the common place of law?
This project analyzes the legality of IP law within engineering in Vietnam, which is currently being negotiated through the coming together of the disparate patterns of talk and practice of international employers or educators and of local engineers. The methodology includes semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation in a European-owned factory and in an English-language university in Hồ Chà Minh City. The research examines how engineers beginning their practice adopt or modify the patterns of talk or practice that give some ideas a proprietary sense, and that give law a place in those proprietary relationships. The interaction between different cultural practices amidst changing legality is fertile empirical ground for theoretical development in this area of simultaneous legal and social change. More broadly, this research engages debates on the policy of global IP protection by reframing the issue around the dynamics of the growing middle-class and professional groups outside the legal community in Vietnam.
My project analyzes the legality of intellectual property (IP) law within the social field of global engineering in Viet Nam. This social field is now under construction, as local engineers adopt and intervene in the patters of talk and practice of their international educators and employers. Specifically, my research examines how engineers beginning their practice adopt or modify the patterns of talk or practice that give some ideas a proprietary sense, and that give law a place in those proprietary relationships. The National Science Foundation has supported the qualitative approach of this project, including semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation in foreign-owned factories and in an English-language university in Ho Chi Minh City. The extended period of fieldwork made possible by NSF support has allowed me to find that law is surprisingly present in daily life in Viet Nam. Legality, as used here following socio-legal scholarship, can be used to refer to patterns of reference to law, to legal institutions and actors, and to legally-constituted concepts in everyday life. In this sense, legality is built into the culture of Ho Chi Minh City in ways that contrast with popular reports. It affects where parents send their children to school, where businesspeople take clients for reimbursable events, and what kind of vehicles fill the streets (and also who drives them). But legality is little perceived as an influence on general social action, and becomes noticeable (or noticeably absent) most often in fields of practice that put participants with different understandings of legality in contact. One of these fields of contact is where engineers in Ho Chi Minh City come to be fashioned into global engineers for the multinational corporations of the world market. Engineers with experience working for multinational employers or experience studying in foreign educational contexts are helping to construct legality in Viet Nam around industrial forms of intellectual property. Trade marks are already highly valued, as shown by the high number of domestic applications for trade mark registration, by the prevalence of global luxury brands in shopping centers, and by the successful opening of Starbucks and McDonald’s first legal franchises in Ho Chi Minh City. Protected by law in Viet Nam only since October 2000, trade secrets are already recognized by many participating engineers, and are an important part of ubiquitous employment contracts. No chip layouts have yet been registered for protection under regulations first issued in 2005, but semiconductor "IPs" are well-known to young electronics engineers as design resources, especially those that are legally-usable free software licensed openly to the general public. And patents are understood by many as fair reward for admired innovation, though widely reported legal battles such as those between Apple and Samsung are often thought unjustified by the ‘trivial’ inventions actually asserted in those suits. This process of reproducing legality across cultural boundaries in the multicultural social field of global engineering in Ho Chi Minh City is not a simple process of transmission or translation. It is a process affected by the complex relationships and interactions between the engineers, their instructors, the managers, their corporations, the government of Viet Nam, and the governments of other countries that advocate for and constitute (for corporations) the foreign persons in the field. My emerging analysis of this process attempts to account for how the practical understandings of legality in these different social groups or entities affect the way industrial IP law is taking shape in Ho Chi Minh City. Knowledge in the field is being introduced to engineers in Viet Nam as valuable and legally protectable, and their practical thinking about legality is not rejecting that premise conceptually. But the principles of legality that generate this value or protection for the corporations and managers introducing the concepts are interpreted in the context of doing business in Viet Nam. The negotiation of the divisions required to constitute the legality of intellectual property — what is legally protectable and what is not — is subject in practice to the divisions between these groups. Practical strategies are differently available to persons differently situated in the social field. This research will contribute to scholarship in IP law and law and social science through theory construction as well as by informing policy. The interaction between different cultural practices and discourses amidst changing law and legality is fertile empirical ground for theoretical development in this area of simultaneous legal and social change. More broadly, this research impacts debates on the policy of global IP protection by reframing the issue around the social dynamics of the growing middle-class and professional groups outside the legal community in Viet Nam.
