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To bring the Trademark Law into line with the new Law of Administrative Proceedings, and to prepare for Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization, the IPO has drafted amendments to a number of articles of the Trademark Law. The draft amendments have been approved by the Executive Yuan, and were passed to the Legislative Yuan on 10 November 2000. However, in view of the large number of bills already before the legislature, the amend-ments are unlikely to be passed in the next sev-eral months yet. We will keep readers informed of developments as they occur.
The proposed amendments affect 16 articles. The main points are as follows:
Legal terminology are revised, and unneces-sary provisions removed, to bring the law into line with the Law of Administrative Proceed-ings.
To reduce the time needed for the examination of renewal applications, and to improve ad-ministrative efficiency, the substantive ex-amination of renewal applications for trade-mark registration is abolished. In other words, when application is made to renew the regis-tration of a trademark, the use of a trademark will no longer be a prerequisite for renewal. It will be sufficient for the applicant to submit an application along with the required fee.
In line with the relevant TRIPS provisions, border control measures are introduced in re-spect of goods which infringe trademark rights, including provisions and procedures relating to a trademark owner's right to apply with the customs authorities to seize infringing goods, and the cancellation by the customs authorities of a seizure order.
Provisions concerning the application of the new or the old law to trademark opposition, invalidation and cancellation cases are moved from the Trademark Law Enforcement Rules to the Trademark Law itself.
