Newsletter
DRAFT AMENDMENTS TO TRADEMARK ACT PUBLISHED
The Intellectual Property Office has put forward a draft of major amendments to the Trademark Act, changing as many as half the articles in the current Act.
The draft amendments have been prepared with reference to the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks, which was adopted in 2006 by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Fol-lowing the 2003 amendments to Taiwan's Trademark Act, which introduced protection for three types of non-traditional trade-mark—single-color marks, three-dimensional marks, and sound marks—the proposed new amendments would further extend the scope of protection of non-traditional marks to include scent marks and motion marks.
The IPO also proposes new provisions to require that when an owner of rights in a trademark in-stitutes dispute resolution procedures, it must produce evidence of use of his trademark. If the trademark has been registered for more than three years, but the rights owner is unable to produce evidence of its use, then the mark's registration may not be relied upon as the basis for seeking the cancellation of a trademark reg-istration granted to another. Proof of trademark use will therefore play a very important role in future disputes. We will closely follow the pro-gress of the proposed amendments.