TIPS^®  Taiwan Intellectual Property Special

Taiwan Will Establish IP Court and Technology Examiners.

The draft of the Law of the Intellectual Property Court Organization and its procedural code has completed on July 15, 2005 and the bill is expected to be sent to the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s Congress) in September.

The IP Court belongs to the High Court System. According to theJudicial Yuan, once the IP Court is established, it will be the court of first instance for any adminis- trative and civil litigation of intellectual properties. Under the current legal system in Taiwan, the parties have to go through the administrative procedures (i.e. the TIPO) for patent validity issue and then bring the infringement issue to the general court in order to obtain civil remedies. The establishment of the IP Court will shorten the time for verifying patent validity and solve the problem of lengthy IP litigation.

Besides, the IP court will have technical examiners, who shall be former patent or trademark examiners, to assist the judges in understanding the technical aspects in the IP litigation. With the assistance of the technical examiners in the court penal, we can expect a quick and accurate decision and an improvement on the quality of IP decisions in Taiwan.