Completing the law is not enough if implementation does not keep up with reality
Speaking at the seminar "Anti-counterfeit goods and consumer protection in e-commerce", organized by Marketing and Family Magazine on December 18, Mr. Tran Huu Linh - Director of the Department of Domestic Market Management and Development (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that in traditional trade, the identifying factors are quite clear: sellers have specific locations, buyers are directly exposed, goods are easy to verify and trade, transparent payment.
In contrast, in the online shopping environment, most of those factors become vague. Buyers do not know exactly who the seller is and where; where the goods are stored; information about the origin and quality of the products is difficult to verify. When a problem occurs, the search and verification of related subjects is also extremely complicated.
According to Mr. Tran Huu Linh, on social networking platforms and e-commerce platforms, identifying sellers and controlling product quality is a big challenge. This lack of transparency has created loopholes for poor quality goods, counterfeit goods, counterfeit goods, and smuggled goods to penetrate the market, causing risks to consumers.
To prevent counterfeit goods on e-commerce platforms, we have determined to do two things in parallel: continue to improve legal regulations, sanctions and organize the implementation of regulations in practice Mr. Linh emphasized.
In recent times, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has focused on completing the legal framework to keep up with the development of e-commerce, avoiding the situation where policies are always behind reality. However, the biggest difficulty at present is still the law enforcement stage. To effectively handle violations in the digital environment, management agencies must have modern and appropriate tools.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade is implementing the development of new management tools, which stipulate that some groups of goods must be declared and traced, especially high-risk items; for other groups of goods, tracing is encouraged.
From January 1, 2026, regulations on goods quality management will be implemented synchronously to help protect genuine products, prevent quality fraud, and contribute to simplifying the supervision and inspection work of competent authorities.
"We are also building early warning systems for violations and fraud in the e-commerce environment, strengthening inspection and examination work" - Mr. Linh affirmed.
Clearly defining the responsibilities of each party
Vietnam has had certain regulations for e-commerce platforms and intermediary platforms, but there are still gaps, making it difficult to manage and handle violations.
According to Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh, Head of Policy Department, Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade), in the coming time, regulations will be supplemented, clarifying the responsibilities of intermediary digital platforms and e-commerce platforms for goods traded on their platforms, including livestream sales activities.
Between e-commerce platforms, intermediary platforms and state management agencies, there needs to be close coordination in receiving, processing and exchanging information, especially information and content with signs of violating the law. According to current regulations, when the authorities detect or request handling, the platform owner and the platform operator must be responsible for removing the information and content of the violation within 24 hours.
After the transaction arises, the responsibility for providing, storing and reporting information belongs to intermediary digital platforms and e-commerce platform operators. With the current scale of transactions, this responsibility becomes even more important. Higher scale means higher requirements for transparency and management responsibility.
However, if we only stop at promoting transactions and applying regulations on documents, it will not be enough to completely solve the problem of counterfeit goods, violating goods, and goods that infringe intellectual property rights in the online environment. What is needed is stronger, more synchronous and continuous action, from management agencies, intermediary platforms to sellers and consumers.
Proactively removing violating products and controlling content from the beginning not only helps to keep the e-commerce market healthy, but also contributes to protecting consumer rights and ensuring the sustainable development of the digital business environment.
