Newsletter
ESTABLISHMENT OF SPECIAL IP COURT IN TAIWAN
IP litigation is on the rise in recent years. Be-cause Taiwan adopts a two-track judicial system, the "validity of IP rights" is decided by admin-istrative courts, whereas infringement cases and other disputes are under the jurisdiction of civil courts. Under such a system, different disputes about the same IP right are heard by administra-tive courts and civil courts, causing delay. In addition, most judges reviewing intellectual property disputes do not have scientific and technical training.
Taiwan's Judicial Yuan launched a plan to es-tablish an Intellectual Property Court in February 2004. It proposed a draft Act Governing Or-ganization of the Intellectual Property Court in December 2005. The IP Court will be located in Linkou Hsiang, Taipei County, and that if the budget can be timely approved by the Legislative Yuan, it is expected to begin operation in March 2007.
According to the draft Act, disputes relating to IP rights which are originally under the respective jurisdiction of civil courts and administrative courts will all be heard by the IP Court. The IP Court will appoint technical clerks to provide assistance to judges.