The Joint Trademark Applications (Joint Right to Trademark Protection) have been Accepted Since August 1, 2006

    In the past, the TIPO (Taiwan Intellectual Property Office) only accepted a single applicant for a trademark application. Since August 1, 2006, the trademark applications jointly filed by multiple applicants are accepted by the TIPO.

    The filing of a trademark registration, the recordal of assignment/ license/ pledge of a mark, divisional application, restriction of the designated goods or services and abandonment of a trademark registration should be filed in the names of all joint owners. For a renewal application, it can be filed in the name of any one of the joint applicants. The official fees for all procedures of a joint trademark application are the same as the fees for the trademark application filed by a single applicant.

I. The Amendment of the Standard of Patent Procedure Examination was Effective as of September 25, 2006

    As of September 25, 2006, TIPO loosened some examination standards for the Patent Procedure Examination. We herewith summarize some main points as follows:

The examiner will no longer check whether the applicant’s signature is the same as it was recorded in the TIPO before for the procedures of claiming domestic priority, the conversion of a patent application, the division of a patent application, and the filing of an associated design application.

To simplify the procedure for an invalidation application, the Chinese translation for the evidence which is written in foreign languages is not required by the examiner, unless the patentee requires Chinese translation.

It is allowed to file a patent application by submitting the Chinese specification and drawings or submitting the specification and drawings in a foreign language to obtain the earliest filing date. In the past, the omission of some pages of the specification or drawings would delay the filing date until the day of supplementing the pages. Now, the omission of some pages of the specification or drawings will not influence the filing date. Only when there is absolutely no specification, claims or drawings for a patent or utility model application, or no drawings for a design application, the filing date will be the day when those required documents are supplemented.

In the past, the omission of the priority date or number would cause the invalidation of the priority claim. Now, as long as the applicant claims the priority in any way when filing, the priority date and number can be supplemented later after filing.

II. From January 1, 2007, The Applicant can File a Response Against the Result of the Technical Report for a Utility Model Patent in the TIPO

    TIPO has adopted a formality examination system for utility model patents since 2004. When an applicant requests for a technical report for his utility model patent and the report is not favorable for the utility model patent, such as lacking novelty or inventive step, the applicant is not allowed to file a response against the result of the technical report for a utility model patent. Since the technical reports will largely influence the interests of the applicants, TIPO has decided to allow the applicants to file responses against the result of the technical report for the utility model patents from January 1, 2007.

The applicants will be allowed to file the responses within 30 days upon receiving the official notice. The examiner will reconsider the technical report after receiving the applicant’s response. If no response is received from the applicant in due course, the examiner will issue the formal technical report.