Taiwan’s amended Patent Act set to take effect

 The new-look Patent Act is set to strengthen protections while increasing convenience for inventors and designers. (Courtesy of TIPO) Publication Date：12/13/2012 Source： Taiwan Today The amended Patent Act will come into force Jan. 1, 2013, according to the Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) under the ROC Ministry of Economic Affairs.The revised act will be more compliant with international standards, with more expansive protection for design patents and increased flexibility in application procedures, TIPO said Dec. 12.Major changes regarding application include permission to apply for a patent for an invention that has been disclosed in a publication provided the submission is made within six months of the disclosure, and the limitation of applications in foreign languages to Arabic, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.In terms of patent examination, the time limit for an applicant to request modifications to the invention description, claims or drawing was removed, while provisions for final notification and correction of mistranslations were added.Patent rights for designs have been expanded to cover icons, graphic user interfaces, generative designs and sets of related items.The amended act clearly requires intent or negligence in the infringement of a patent before damages may be claimed, while related regulations adopt the internationally accepted patent exhaustion doctrine.Compulsory licensing will apply "where the patented invention is exploited noncommercially in the public interest, in response to national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency," TIPO explained. New articles covering compulsory licensing when pharmaceutical products are needed to help other countries treat epidemics were also added.TIPO will no longer have the power to invalidate patents itself, and invalidation requests may be filed against one or more individual claims within a patent.The new version incorporates 159 amendments, with 108 articles revised, 36 added and 15 deleted. Eight regulations and five examination standards were also adjusted to bring them in line with the revised law.The text of the amended act and related regulations are available on its website, TIPO said.