經通國際智慧產權事務所

On October 11, 2007, the Taipei High Administrative Court upheld the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office’s (TIPO) and the Committee of Appeal of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ decisions of rejecting the invalidation filed against patent no. D102155 with the title of “Multifunction Dual-socket Card Reader”. In the said decision, the Court noted that the patent rights of identical/similar new designs are prevented from being granted to different applicants with different application filing dates according to Article 111 of Patent Act, “Where a design claimed in a patent application is identical or similar to the contents described in the specification or drawings submitted along with an application for design patent filed prior to but patented after the filing of the present patent application, no design patent may be granted to the design.” However, the Court provided that the Patent Act in Taiwan is dominated by territorial principle. Thus, because the prior art proposed by the appellant is a patent in China published on Sep. 3, 2008, and China and Taiwan are under different jurisdictions, even though the application date of the proposed prior art is Feb. 27, 2003 and earlier than the application date as May 9, 2003 of the disputed patent, the Court concluded that the aforementioned Article 111 of Patent Act is not applicable.

Based on the reasons listed above, the Court ordered to uphold the TIPO’s and the Committee of Appeal’s decisions of rejecting the invalidation filed against the disputed patent.

Organized and translated by Angela Shen

International Affairs