The Vietnamese franchisee of an American training company has filed a lawsuit against one of its former teachers for copyright infringement, it told local media on Wednesday.

The Dac Nhan Tam business school, also known as Dale Carnegie Vietnam, announced at the March 5 press meeting that last month it filed a suit at the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court against Le Nhu Hieu, who had been trained and later taught at the school before being dismissed in 2010.

Dale Carnegie Vietnam is the local franchise of Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., a performance-based training company headquartered in the U.S. 

Fifteen local experts, including Hieu, received training before teaching courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills at Dale Carnegie Vietnam shortly after the school was founded in HCMC in 2007 and had its curricula and methodology franchised from the American school, according to Nguyen Trinh Khanh Linh, CEO of Dale Carnegie Vietnam.

In 2009, Hieu adopted the use of the courses to his outside teaching without previously seeking permission. He was fired from Dale Carnegie Vietnam one year later.

In 2012, Hieu set up his own training company and continued to use the school’s exclusive courses for his training programs.

Linh stressed that Hieu has used up to 99 percent of her school’s material and form, methodology, and training procedures without any authorization.

She decided to file a suit against Hieu in mid-2013, but postponed it until the school gathered enough evidence.

According to Prof. Nguyen Van Nam, Dale Carnegie Vietnam’s lawyer, Hieu’s act has violated both the Vietnamese and American schools’ intellectual property rights.

Dale Carnegie Vietnam has not mentioned their compensation requests, but demanded that Hieu immediately stop the violation, promise not to commit the offense again and publicly apologize to the schools in the mass media.

“If he refuses to stop the wrongdoing, we might consider asking Dale Carnegie & Associates to bring the case to an American court,” lawyer Nam added.

Nam also noted that from now on, Dale Carnegie Vietnam will take legal action against anyone illegally using their course content and training methods, including their learners.