經通國際智慧產權事務所

On July 1, 2008, the first IP court in Taiwan will commence operation together with the following judicial proceeding modifications,

1.During the past, patent litigations in Taiwan during the trials are often halted due to the patent opposition proceedings as administrative remedies. However, the new dual-track system allows the judges to directly deal with the patent validities without awaiting the resolutions from the administrative remedy processes. Thus, the disputes covering patent validities and litigations including infringements and awarding of damages can be solved during a single proceeding. As a result, the different opinions between the administrative proceedings and the court litigations can also be minimized.

2.In order to increase the examination quality of IP court, experts in the field of IP litigations are transferred from administrative and other courts. Moreover, there have been ongoing trainings of specialized IP judges with the aim of improving the adjudication ability of technology cases. On the other hand, enlightened by the Japanese and Korean systems, the positions of Technology Examination Officers are created to boost the efficiency of IP litigations.

3.The new IP litigation procedure follows the U.S. system and employs stricter examination standards for the approval of preliminary injunctions. The new approval criteria include,

a)Clear scopes of claims

b)Chances of wining the suit

c)Level of immediate danger

d)Seriousness of damages

e)Balanced inter partes interests

f)Public welfare

The newly founded IP Court is oriented to have priority jurisdiction instead of absolute jurisdiction. Therefore, as the only one IP court in Taiwan is located in Taipei County, based on the mutual agreements between the plaintiffs and the defendants, lawsuits originated in other areas of Taiwan can be designated to be processed by the local courts to save the cost and increase the efficiency.

However, the Judicial Yuan (the highest hierarchy of judicial administration in Taiwan) has set the basic principle of IP court’s jurisdiction to include cases possessing the nature of being undividable and with the objects of litigation falling within the scope of intellectual property. On the other side, in order to increase the efficiency of reconnaissance, fist instances of criminal cases are basically assigned to the district courts.

Organized and translated by Jenny Yu

International Affairs