Newsletter
NEW IPO MEASURES
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs recently intro-duced the following new patent plans:
The IPO has promulgated the Manual of Patent Procedure examination to clarify the scope of examination, and simplify patent filing documents and their execution, as well as matters on refunding of official fees.
With respect to registration of patent agents, applications for certified priority documents, reissuance of patent certificates, etc., the IPO established a special counter on 25 April 2005, to offer complete and fast-track services.
The IPO plans to send annuity payment re-minders to patent agents and Top 100 enter-prises in Taiwan by e-mail for efficiency purposed.
The IPO encourages patent agents to fill in the IPC information in patent applications filed for their clients, and will decide whether or not to continue such encouragement in light of actual needs.
1.Implementation and Continuous Formula-tion of Relevant Manuals of Patent Ex-amination
The IPO has adopted the following ex-amination manuals:
(1)Chapters 1 to 8 for Invention Patent Substantive Examination;
(2)Chapters 1 to 6 for New Design Patent Substantive Examination; and
(3)Manual of Procedure Examination.
The IPO plans to complete Chapters 9 to 11 of the Substantive Examination of In-vention Patent, Cancellation and Ex Officio Examination Guidelines, the Examination Manual for Inventions in the Chemistry Fields and Chinese Medical Inventions. In addition, the draft Key Points for the As-sessment of Patent Infringement has been delivered to the Judicial Yuan for refer-ence.
2.Effective Control of Patent Examination
(1)Improvement of the Quality of Patent Examination Opinions
Relevant tasks include the following:
a)to increase the examiners' capacity to write examination opinions and decisions;
b)to improve the manner of rejecting a patent case based on "presumed novelty violation" or "inventive step" violation to avoid wrong ref-erence to regulations or other omissions or to reduce subjective opinions asserted by examiners;
c)to improve the manner of rejecting a claim due to insufficient support, or avoid a request for limitation of claim scope without sufficient rea-sons; and
d)to strengthen research and discussion of cases under review so as to harmonize the examiners’ opinions.
(2)to establish a steering committee for improvement of patent examination quality
The IPO has formed a steering committee com-posed of patent agents and requested members to offer pertinent practice information, as deemed necessary, for reference so as to improve the examination quality.