經通國際智慧產權事務所

On October 30, 2007, the Committee of Appeal of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taiwan rejected the appeal against the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office’s (TIPO) decision of invalidating patent application no. 88204040. For the appellant’s claim of that the TIPO’s notification of invalidation was not properly received in person, and thus caused the patentee’s inability of filing the appeal before the official deadline, the Committee pointed out that according to Article 74 of Administrative Procedure Act, service “may be effected by leaving the document for service with the local self-governing authority or police authority of the place where the service is intended to be executed, and preparing a notice of service in duplicate, one of which shall be posted on the door at the domicile, residence, business office, business establishment or workplace of the person to be served upon and the other shall be either delivered to one of his neighbors for forwarding to the person to be served upon or placed in the mailbox or at a suitable location of the place where service is intended to be executed”.

The Committee reasoned that the deadline for filing an administrative appeal is indicated in Article 14 of Administrative Appeal Act as “within 30 days since one day after the date which administrative action is served”. Since service of TIPO’s invalidation notification was executed according to Article 74 of Administrative Procedure Act on November 27, 2006, regardless of the fact that the appellant only received the said notification in person on April 17, 2007 for the courtesy of the TIPO to re-send the notification, and filed the appeal against the TIPO on May 15, 2007, the deadline for filing an administrative appeal should still be based on the service execution date of November 27, 2006. Therefore, the said appeal was rejected since it was filed after the official deadline.

Organized and Translated by Tony Chen

General Manager