TIPS^®  Taiwan Intellectual Property Special

The Court May Consult with Expert in the Intellectual Property Trial Cases

Since the trial system in Taiwan is not the Jury System, the Court often relies on examination report issued by the competent authority when trying cases relating to medical disputes or intellectual property rights. In order to assist the Court to find out the truth, the Judicial Yuan (Taiwan's judicial branch) announced the “Rules of the Expert’s Participation and Consultation in Trial” (“Rules”), which provides that the Court may decide, upon the parties agreement or ex officio, to adopt the “Expert Participation Trial System” when trying cases relating to intellectual property rights or technology.

Pursuant to the Rules, the court may, within the territory of its venue, select experts with special knowledge, technique, and/or experience to be listed in the reference book that can be provided to the judges and parties in need. When adopting the Expert Participation Trial System, the parties may select one expert to participate the trial. If the parties fail to select the expert, the Court may appoint one expert to participate the trial. However, if the parties object to this expert appointed by the Court, the Court should appoint another expert (such alternative appointment is limited to three times). If the parties still object to the expert appointed by the Court, it shall be deemed that the parties disagree to adopt the Expert Participation Trial System. It is noted that, the parties should not object to the expert once the expert has given his/her opinions/comments on the case at trial, except for special objective evidence to prove the bias of the expert.

The expert who participates the trial should submit his/her expert opinions for the court’s reference. Yet, such opinions should not involve with the recognition on facts or the judgement on law. Moreover, the expert shall keep confidence the parties’ professional and trade secret and privacy he/she becomes aware of during the participation of this trial.

Chinese Domain Name Can Be Simplified by Deleting .com Since November In order to simplify the domain name, the domain name registrars of many countries take new policy on the registration. TWNIC indicated that some countries start adopting a new policy on the domain name system by deleting the generic top level domains (gTLDs) (namely, .com, .net, .org). Japan will also adopt such policy since this October. Given the aforesaid global trends, TWNIC decides to adopt such new domain name system on Chinese domain name since this November. For instance, the Chinese domain name of Acer company can be either http://www.acer.com.tw or http://www.acer.tw. As to the simplified English domain name, TWNIC plans to exercise this new system next year.

The reason why TWNIC exercise this new system from Chinese domain name is because at present, Chinese domain name system is primarily used in Taiwan but not other country. Therefore, the impact of such new system can be lower down to the minimum. With respect to English domain name, given the fact that the possible influence will be greater than that of Chinese domain name, it will not be promulgated until next year after the Domain Name Dispute Resolution Organization publishes the Guidelines of Domain Name Dispute Resolution and its rules.

In addition, TWNIC indicated that the timeline for collecting the registration fee of Chinese domain name would be postponed (which was announced to start collecting fees since November, when the registration commenced in this May). TWNIC did not mention the actual schedule to start collecting registration fees.