Heroic brand take-over fails

Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology has barred a Vietnamese cigarette producer from registering and producing two brands of cigarettes that belong to an Indonesian tobacco company, according to a Tuoi Tre News story.

Vietnam National Tobacco Corporation (Vinataba) had wanted to register the JET and HERO brands, but the Sumatra Tobacco Trading Company (STTC) objected.

In July 2015, Vinataba said, in a proposal to the national office of intellectual property, that STTC had, without reason, not registered the trademarks in Vietnam for the past five years.

Vinataba said that if the brands were registered in its name, it would produce them or their equivalents.

It alleged that the two brands were contraband goods in Vietnam and that STTC was involved in an illegal trade.

But the proposal was denied because of a lack of evidence proving that STTC was involved in smuggling and because smuggling did not comprise legal grounds to force a company to cancel its trademarks since the products were officially retailed by its partner in Vietnam, Southern Airports Services Joint Stock Company.

The Science and Technology Ministry thus ‘granted no approval to the trademark cancelation proposal by Vinataba’.

STTC says that JET and HERO are not smuggled into Vietnam, but the Vietnam Tobacco Association says the two brands account for more than 90 percent of the contraband cigarette market in Vietnam.

The association says also that both of the products breach a number of regulations. JET and HERO are said to be sold without the required picture-based health warning, the place and year of manufacture, and the expiration date.

The toxicity of the two products is said to be far higher than the rates allowed by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health.