Executive Yuan passes Trademark Act draft amendment to facilitate Taiwan’s TPP accession and stay current with the Criminal Code’s new confiscation provision - 2016.08.08

On June 23, 2016, TIPO’s draft partial amendment and amendment to Articles 98 and 111 of the Trademark Act passed review at the Executive Yuan and will later be reviewed by the Legislative Yuan. This is to facilitate TPP accession, as well as to stay current with the Criminal Code’s new confiscation provision.
Key revisions made to meet TPP requirements include: 1. The “knowingly” subjective assessment provision applied to determine civil or criminal liability for counterfeiting trademark labels is deleted. In its place, the general subjective assessment provision is restored and applied. 2. A new criminal penalty provision on counterfeiting trademarks or collective trademark labels is added. 3. Acts such as counterfeiting trademarks, collective trademarks or certification mark labels are clearly defined. The provision on banning sale of infringing goods is revised to include sale via electronic media or the Internet...read more

IPR Trends Jan-Jun 2016: Patent and Trademark Statistics - 2016.08.02

IPR Trends Jan-Jun 2016: Patent and Trademark Statistics
A. Patent Applications
1. New applications for all three types of patents were down by 2.55% to 34,494 cases.
2. Applications for invention (20,622) and utility model (9,927) patents were down by 2.17% and 6.23%, respectively. Meanwhile, design (3,945) applications were up by 5.74% (Table 1).
3. Invention applications (7,447) by residents were down by 6.84%; those by non-residents (13,175) were up by 0.69% (Table 1).
4. Breakdown by country, Japan (5,994) topped the list, followed by the US (3,409), South Korea (807), China (649), and Germany (631) (Fig.1).
5. The top five domestic invention filing corporations were Hon Hai (176), AU Optronics (133), Acer (109), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) (87), and China Steel (78) (Fig.2).
6. Among the top five invention filing foreign corporations, Intel (375) continued to stay on top, followed by Qualcomm (313), Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) (204), Tokyo Electron (166), and Applied Materials (148) (Fig.2)...read more

IPR Trends Q1 2016: Patent and Trademark Statistics - 2016.04.29

A. Patent
1. New applications for all three types of patents came down by 3.32% to 16,649 cases.
2. Inventions (10,306) and utility models (4,551) decreased by 2.08% and 7.07%. Designs (1,792) were slightly down by 0.39% (Table 1).
3. Inventions by residents (3,505) dropped 11.65% but jumped 3.71% for non-residents (6,801) (Table 1).
4. By country, Japan (3,375) came on top, followed by the US (1,645), South Korea (416), Germany (313), and China (264) (Fig.1).
5. The top five domestic corporations filing new invention patents were AU Optronics (74), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) (53), Acer (50), Hon Hai (48), and Ability Opto-Electronics Technology (38) (Fig.2).
6. In foreign corporations, Intel (151) came on top, followed by Qualcomm (150), Toshiba (122), Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (105), and Hewlett-Packard Development Company (90) (Fig.2).
7. Inventions by domestic corporations (2,467) and universities (310) were down 13.65% and 23.46%, respectively. National Tsing Hua University came on top with 27 applications. Domestic individual applicants (601) and research institutes (127), contrarily, saw 1.18% and 14.41% growth, respectively (Table 3, Fig. 2, Fig.3)...read more

The Amended Substantive Examination Guideline of Design Patent Become Effective on April 1, 2016 - 2016.04.27

In order to meet international trend and domestic industry’s demand, TIPO has amended the examination guideline of design patent after referring to international norms, examination practices and precedents. On April 1, 2016, the amended examination guideline entered into force. The key revisions are:

1. How the drawing should be disclosed is changed for "designs which are not claiming colors". For those designs claiming colors, it is required to disclose drawings with colors. Designs which are not claiming colors shall disclose the ink drawings, grey-scale computer-generated drawings or black-and-white photographs. Drawings are the main object for examination and descriptions are supplementary.

2. In order to better distinguish between "claimed portion" and "unclaimed portion" of design, the applicant is allowed to use solid/broken lines, half-transparent coloring, grey-scale coloring, and circling the scope or other forms of disclosure.

3. The purpose of the unclaimed portion of design is revised. It is now used to explain (a) the article to which the design is applied, (b) the position, size and layout of the claimed design and (c) the environment of the design.