AI & Data Privacy Lawyers in Vietnam – Compliance, Contracts & Risk

AI lawyers in Vietnam now have statutory text to work with. Law No 131/2025/QH15, in force from 1 April 2026, inserted artificial intelligence provisions directly into the Intellectual Property Law — including a training-data exception and a mandate for the Government to regulate how rights arise in AI-generated output. The same team covers data privacy in Vietnam: personal data compliance, vendor and cloud contracts, and the risk register behind any AI deployment.

This page sets out what is settled, what is still to be filled in by the Government, and where a company deploying AI in or from Vietnam is exposed. UniLaw advises technology companies, platforms, and businesses deploying AI systems in Vietnamese operations.

A decided case AI lawyers in Vietnam point to

Judgment No. 72/2023/KDTM-PT of 5 July 2023 — Superior People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City, intellectual property dispute over computer software.

A United States software owner held a registered copyright in an engineering program. A Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism inspection had already found the Vietnamese defendant had copied the program onto one machine without the owner’s permission, and the court accepted that the infringement was made out. The owner claimed USD 69,590 (VND 1,615,183,900) and a public apology in three newspapers.

It recovered nothing. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal under Article 308(1) of the Civil Procedure Code, applying Articles 204 and 205 of the Intellectual Property Law and Joint Circular No. 02/2008. The defendant said an employee had installed the software on his own initiative; there was no drawing or product made with it; and the owner produced no lawful evidence that the defendant had exploited the software commercially or profited from it. Damages under Article 205 have to be proved and quantified, not inferred from the licence price.

Two things AI lawyers in Vietnam take from it. An inspection finding proves the act, not the loss — the two are separate evidential jobs. And where the object is software or model output, the recoverable figure is built from commercial use, so the evidence to preserve is deployment and revenue, not the price list.

Decided technology and IP cases are published on case.unilaw.vn.

The legal basis AI lawyers in Vietnam work from

• Law No. 131/2025/QH15, in force 1 April 2026, amending the Intellectual Property Law — Article 7(5) (the training-data exception), Article 6(5) (AI-generated output, remitted to the Government), Article 22(1) (software delivered as a service).
• Intellectual Property Law, consolidated as No. 11/VBHN-VPQH — Articles 204 and 205, which decide what an infringement claim is actually worth.
• Vietnam’s dedicated Law on Artificial Intelligence and its implementing instruments — labelling, risk classification and controlled testing. UniLaw advises on the verified Vietnamese text rather than a summary.
• The EU AI Act, where a Vietnamese company places a system on the EU market or its output is used there.
• Civil Procedure Code or the Law on Commercial Arbitration — whichever the technology agreement sends the dispute to.

In more detail on one question we are asked constantly: who owns AI-generated content in Vietnam.

Training data: the exception AI lawyers in Vietnam rely on

Article 7 clause 5, added by Law No 131/2025/QH15, is the provision that matters most to anyone building or fine-tuning a model.

Organisations and individuals may use texts and data on intellectual property objects that have been lawfully published and that the public is permitted to access, for the purposes of scientific research, testing, and training artificial intelligence systems — provided the use does not unreasonably prejudice the rights and legitimate interests of the author or the intellectual property owner.

Three limbs decide whether a training set is inside the exception: the material must have been lawfully published; the public must be permitted to access it; and the use must not unreasonably prejudice the rightholder. Scraped material behind a paywall or a terms-of-use restriction fails the first two limbs before the third is reached.

The exception is drafted by purpose, not by actor. It is available to a commercial developer as much as to a research institute, so long as the purpose is research, testing or training.

Who owns AI-generated output: the question AI lawyers in Vietnam get most

Article 6 clause 5, added by the same Law, does not answer the question — it assigns it. The Government is to regulate how intellectual property rights arise and are established under Article 6 clauses 1 to 4 where the object was created using an artificial intelligence system.

Until that regulation is issued, the position for AI-assisted output is governed by the ordinary rules in Article 6, with the uncertainty that implies. The practical answer for a business is contractual: allocate ownership, warranties and indemnities in the agreement, rather than relying on a default rule that is still being written.

One boundary is now express. Article 15 clause 4, added by Law No 131/2025/QH15, puts ideas, slogans and work titles standing alone outside copyright protection. A prompt, however carefully engineered, is an idea. It is not protected as such.

Software and AI models: what the 2026 amendment changed

Article 22 clause 1, as amended by Law No 131/2025/QH15, defines a computer program as a set of instructions expressed as commands, code, schemes or other forms which, when embedded in a medium or device operated by a programming language, enables a computer or device to perform work or achieve a specific result. It is protected as a literary work, whether expressed in source code or machine code.

The backup copy rule was rewritten for the cloud era. A lawful user of a copy may make one backup copy to replace a copy that is deleted, damaged or unusable, and may not transfer it to anyone else. But where the program is supplied as a service or through an online platform, the backup position follows the terms of use or the licence agreement between the parties, not the statutory default.

For an AI product delivered as an API or a hosted service, that sentence moves the question out of statute and into the contract. AI lawyers in Vietnam draft to it rather than around it.

Article 22 clause 1 also preserves the ability of the author and the copyright owner to agree in writing on correcting and upgrading the program.

Conflicting rights over one object: what AI lawyers in Vietnam watch

Article 7 clause 4, added by Law No 131/2025/QH15, addresses a problem that AI output creates often: several intellectual property rights arising over one object.

Where a right arises or is established later over the same object, and exercising it conflicts with the normal exploitation of the right that arose earlier, the later right is forced to cease being exercised. That decision is made by the Court. The Government is to provide detail.

The sequencing consequence is practical: for a product built on layered inputs — a model, a dataset, a fine-tune, a generated asset — the order in which rights arose can determine which of them survives a conflict.

The EU AI Act reaches Vietnamese companies

A Vietnamese business with no EU establishment can still be caught by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act, published in the Official Journal on 12 July 2024.

Article 2(1)(a) applies the Regulation to “providers placing on the market or putting into service AI systems or placing on the market general-purpose AI models in the Union, irrespective of whether those providers are established or located within the Union or in a third country”.

Article 2(1)(c) goes further, applying it to “providers and deployers of AI systems that have their place of establishment or are located in a third country, where the output produced by the AI system is used in the Union”.

Read that second limb carefully. It is triggered by where the output is used, not by where the company sits or where the model runs. A Vietnamese developer serving an EU customer is inside the Regulation.

Article 3(1) defines an AI system as “a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments”.

Compliance with Vietnamese law is therefore not the whole answer for an exporting business. The two regimes have to be mapped against each other, obligation by obligation.

Vietnam’s dedicated AI statute

Vietnam has adopted a dedicated Law on Artificial Intelligence, with implementing instruments following it. UniLaw advises on it, but this page does not reproduce its article numbers.

The reason is a working rule the firm applies to every citation: nothing is published against an instrument that has not been checked line by line against the official Vietnamese source. Until that verification is complete for the AI statute and its implementing decree and circular, this page confines itself to provisions the firm has verified — the amendments made by Law No 131/2025/QH15, and the EU Regulation.

For advice on the dedicated AI statute, including labelling obligations, risk classification and the controlled testing regime, contact the firm directly. The analysis is done against the verified text, not against a summary.

Contracts: where the risk actually sits today

Because the statutory position on AI-generated output is still being completed, most exposure is allocated by contract rather than by statute. The provisions that decide a dispute are usually these.

Ownership of output. Who owns what the system produces, and what happens to derivative work built on it.

Training data warranties. Whether the supplier warrants that training material met the Article 7 clause 5 conditions — lawfully published, publicly accessible, no unreasonable prejudice.

Indemnity scope. Whether third-party IP claims arising from output are covered, and whether the cap swallows the indemnity.

Service terms over statute. For software delivered as a service, Article 22 clause 1 as amended sends the backup position to the terms of use. Those terms have to be read as operative law between the parties, not as boilerplate.

Forum. Where a foreign supplier is involved, the Law on Commercial Arbitration consolidated as No 60/VBHN-VPQH applies to an arbitration clause and Article 16 requires it in writing. For court proceedings with a foreign element, Articles 469 to 472 of the Civil Procedure Code consolidated as No 21/VBHN-VPQH govern. For a commercial claim, Article 319 of the Commercial Law consolidated as No 113/VBHN-VPQH gives two years from infringement.

AI in an investment or licensing transaction

Where an AI business is acquired or funded, the Investment Law No 143/2025/QH15 applies alongside the IP position. Article 21 clause 3 requires a foreign investor to register a capital contribution or share purchase before the shareholder register changes in the situations it lists, and Article 8 governs market access conditions for the sector.

On the IP side, Article 148 of the consolidated Intellectual Property Law No 11/VBHN-VPQH is the trap in a technology deal: an assignment of registered industrial property rights is effective only once recorded, and a licence — except a trademark licence — must be recorded to bind third parties. A model licence that is not recorded binds the two parties and no one else.

Deployment checklist AI lawyers in Vietnam work through

Before an AI system goes live in a Vietnamese operation, these are the questions that decide the legal position.

What is the system, in the Regulation’s terms? Article 3(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 turns on autonomy, adaptiveness after deployment, and inference from input to output. Many tools marketed as AI do not meet that definition; some automation not marketed as AI does.

Where does the output land? Article 2(1)(c) of the Regulation is triggered by use of the output in the Union, regardless of where the provider or deployer sits.

Where did the training data come from? Each source has to be tested against Article 7 clause 5 of the Intellectual Property Law as amended: lawfully published, publicly accessible, and no unreasonable prejudice to the rightholder.

Who is the supplier, and what did they warrant? A Vietnamese deployer buying a foreign model inherits the risk the contract leaves with it.

What is generated, and who claims it? Until the Government regulation under Article 6 clause 5 is issued, the contract is the allocation mechanism.

Does any earlier right conflict? Article 7 clause 4 lets a Court stop the exercise of a later right that conflicts with normal exploitation of an earlier one.

What to send when instructing

• A description of the system and how it is delivered — on premises, API, or hosted service.
• The supplier contract and the terms of use, in full.
• The training data sources, and the basis on which each was obtained.
• Whether any output is used by customers in the European Union.
• Any existing IP registrations over the model, the dataset or the outputs.
• Any third-party complaint already received.

If the deployment date is fixed, send that first. The mapping across two regimes takes longer than a single-jurisdiction review.

AI law research map

• Who owns AI-generated content in Vietnam.
• Category index: AI Law.

Where AI work meets other practices

Most AI questions in Vietnam are still answered through intellectual property law, so the closest reading sits in that library while the AI category is built out:

• Copyright and intellectual property law in Vietnam.
• Software copyright · Software patents.
• Website copyright · Internet copyright.
• Category index: IP Law.

Judgments UniLaw has analysed are published at case.unilaw.vn.

Other expertise you may find relevant

• Vietnam intellectual property lawyers — registration, licensing and enforcement.
• Vietnam corporate lawyers — structuring the technology company.
• Vietnam investment lawyers — foreign investment into an AI business.
• Vietnam real estate lawyers — proptech and valuation model terms.
• Vietnam M&A lawyers — data and model assets inside a target.

How UniLaw handles an AI instruction

First, the exposure is mapped across both regimes: the Vietnamese position and, where output reaches the EU, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.

Second, the training set is tested against the three limbs of Article 7 clause 5 — lawfully published, publicly accessible, no unreasonable prejudice.

Third, ownership of output is settled contractually, because Article 6 clause 5 leaves the default rule to a Government regulation still being completed.

Fourth, for software delivered as a service, the terms of use are reviewed as operative law under Article 22 clause 1 as amended.

Fifth, every statutory provision relied on is verified against the official Vietnamese source before it is used in advice.

Request an initial assessment from AI lawyers in Vietnam

Send a description of the system, how it is delivered, where the training data came from, who the users are, and whether any output reaches the European Union. UniLaw will map which regimes apply and where the contract has to carry the risk.

Fees are agreed in a written legal services contract before work begins, with the scope and the basis of charging set out in it.

Offices: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang. Email legal@unilaw.vn.

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