經通國際智慧產權事務所

On August 23, 2007, Taipei High Administrative Court revoked both the rejection (against the appeal) by the Committee of Appeal of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the rejection by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) against the applicant of patent application no. 92123724 with the title of “Instrument for Measurement of Concentration of Specific Substances from the Original Position”. The Court pointed out that the official rejection by the TIPO is based on the statement of that the said patent application “would have been reasonably obvious to someone skilled in the art and thus lacked of an inventive step”. However, as the said statement is not supported by any specific description of the technology indicated in the prior art, the Court held that the TIPO’s rejection as a breach to Article 5 of the Administrative Procedure Act, which provides “the substance of administrative acts shall be clear and definite”.

According to the appellant, the main characteristic of the disputed patent is to segment a specific and evenly concentrated volume to be measured. However, the official rejection by the TIPO did not indicate that the related disclosure of the main characteristic of the disputed patent is included in the prior art. Also, the rejection issued by the Committee only indicated that “the measurement method of the prior art covers the data of volume” without actual indication of how the data of volume is covered.

Organized and Translated by Burke Tsai

International Affairs