Patent

TIPO Expects Additional Manpower of 209 To Shorten Invention Patent Pendency To 24 Months By The Year 2013

The problem of the number of pending invention patent applications continuing to increase each year has long bothered the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). To efficiently clear up patent backlogs and resolve the long pendency for invention applications, on June 3rd the Executive Yuan passed an Amendment to the Act of the Organization of Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Economic Affairs, which will reinforce the TIPO with a total of 209 new employees. It is expected that, by means of staffing, the pendency of each patent application starting from the year 2013 will be significantly shortened to 24 months in contrast to the current 36 months.

The Amendment to the Act of the Organization of Intellectual Property Office, proposed by TIPO, mainly emphasizes three aspects:

1. The 170 contracted employees will enjoy a 5-year tenure, and perform patent examination work together with official patent examiners.
2. To increase by 39 assistant patent examiners.
3. To relax restrictions for recruiting academic manpower and outsourced experts to conduct patent searches.

Beginning in August, 100 Substitute Civilian Servicemen will gradually join TIPO to conduct patent searches. In addition, TIPO plans to use 20-30% of annuity fees it received to fund the setting up of a Center for Intellectual Property Rights, the purpose of which aims at providing a continuous financial support for the retention of examination manpower after the termination of contracted employees’ 5-year tenure contracts. The self-funded IPR Center may possibly be further developed into a non-governmental organization (NGO) to assist patent searches for speeding up the examination of technology-heavy patent applications.

Recently, Taiwan has begun aggressively carrying out a government reform project. The passing of the Amendment to the Act of the Organization of Intellectual Property Office demonstrates that the government values innovative industries such as invention patents. For patent applicants, the promising 24-month examination pendency brings a light of hope, especially for domestic industries.