TRADEMARK LAW ARTICLES 77-1 AND 79 AMENDED

07/01/2002

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Amendments to the Trademark Law, to bring it into line with the Law of Administrative Proce-dures, were promulgated on 29 May 2002, and came into effect on 31 May. Their main content is as follows:

The former Article 40 of the Trademark Law Enforcement Rules is moved into the Trade-mark Law itself as Article 77-1, with amended wording; and

The reference to amended articles in Article 79 is changed to refer specifically to the amendments promulgated on 7 May 1997.

The above amendments differ from those origi-nally proposed by the IPO. This is because the Executive Yuan gathered all the amendments that involve substantive changes to the law into a separate draft, and asked the Legislative Yuan to give a quick passage to the above amendments, which relate only to the requirements of the Law of Administrative Procedures. The other set of amendments, involving substantive change to the Trademark Law's content, is still before the Legislative Yuan, and is not likely to be prom-ulgated for another one to two years. We will closely follow the progress of these amendments, and keep readers updated.