Taiwan government aims to accelerate the prosecution process and provide a broader protection for the industry to encourage inventors and brand owners to seek protections through the trademark and patent system. Here are the summaries of the new policies just launched in the past year and the introduction of the Draft of the new Patent law and Trademark Act.

Extend the duration of design patent protection from 12 years to 15 years. Consider most of the countries provide 15 years protection for design patent, therefore, the legislative yuan passed the amendment of Patent law to extend the duration of design patent protection from 12 years to 15 years to provide broader protection and attract international inventors to seek protections in Taiwan.

Launched the accelerated examination system for trademark. Started from May 2020, Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) launched an accelerated examination system for trademark applications. If the new trademark application is filed in a specific form, i.e. in electronic form and all the designated goods/ services are standard terms, there’s a deduction of the official fees and the subject applications will be reviewed at least 2 months earlier. It usually takes 6-8 months for the applicant to receive the first review outcome from TIPO and with the accelerated examination system, the applicant will receive the outcome of the review from the examiner within 5 months after the filing date. It enables the applicant to launch their products in the market more quickly.

Draft amendment of Patent Law

The changes of the Patent Law are tremendous, and worth pay attention to, we will continuously provide the updates.

1. TIPO will set up a committee to review the invalidation and conflict cases. The committee will be composed by 3-5 committee members to review the case and oral arguments are required in the procedure.
2. If the party does not satisfy with the result decide by the committee, the party may file the litigation in the IP court directly.
3. Patent ownership will be decided by the civil procedure, not the administrative procedure. In the past, both IP court and the civil courts can review the patent dispute cases and that makes whole procedure very complicated. Therefore, TIPO suggest moving the patent ownership disputes for civil court to review and let IP court to review other patent dispute cases.

Draft of Trademark Law

TIPO suggest setting up some qualifications for trademark agent because currently Taiwan does not set any qualifications for trademark agents and lawyers urged the TIPO to set up a strict qualification for the trademark agents. The aforementioned qualification will remarkably affect current trademark practice because most of the trademark agents are not lawyers. And TIPO proposed to use cross examination for complicated opposition/invalidation cases. If the lawmakers agree with the proposal of TIPO, in the future, only trademark attorneys or qualified trademark agents who passed the exam/review procedure could handle the trademark prosecution matters. The cost to file trademark applications in Taiwan might arise because lawyers charge more.

Our Taiwan team will continuously monitor the development of the IP law in Taiwan and provide updates. If you have any IP related matters that need our assistant, feel free to contact us. We are professional experts and able to handle IP matters from prosecution, enforcement to litigation in Taiwan.