Newsletter
EXECUTIVE YUAN APPROVED DRAFT PATENT AGENT ACT
In order to improve the patent agent system in Taiwan, the Executive Yuan delivered a draft Patent Agent Act to the Legislative Yuan for review in 1988, which is still pending. Mean-while, patent agents' qualifications, duties, prac-tice guidelines and other related matters are governed by the Patent Agent Regulations. In order to implement the conclusions reached in the Economic Development Advisory Confer-ence held by in 2001, the Executive Yuan up-dated its draft in December 2005 with the fol-lowing main features:
A person may qualify as a patent agent after passing the national patent agent examination and obtained a patent agent certificate (Arti-cles 3-5);
A patent agent must finish the pre-practice training and register with the Association of Patent Agents, and can practice only in a patent firm (Articles 6, 7 and 9-13);
The Association of Patent Agents will be re-sponsible for discipline of patent agents (Ar-ticles 14-22);
A patent agent will be punished if he/she vio-lates laws or regulations (Articles 23-29 and 31);
A person practicing patent matters without a patent agent qualification or without comply-ing with legal requirements may be punished (Article 30);
An existing patent agent who has met specific qualifications is entitled to request an exemp-tion from taking and passing patent agent examinations (Article 33);
An existing patent agent who has already re-ceived a patent agent certificate may continue to handle patent matters (Articles 36-39).
According to the statistics released by the IPO, there were about 8,000 individuals with patent agent certificates as of November 2005, among whom about 500 were active in practice. The focus during the legislation process is on how to protect the rights and interests of these existing patent agents once the Act takes effect.
According to the draft approved by the Executive Yuan, the existing patent agents are allowed to practice (Articles 36-39), and if they meet any of the following qualifications before the Act takes effect, they are also exempted from taking patent agent examinations:
one who has passed the national examinations for specialists and technicians, lawyers, or accountants, and has held a patent agent cer-tificate and practiced in the patent field for more than three years;
one who has served as a governmental ser-vant/patent examiner for more than two years, after passing the senior governmental service examinations, the special national examina-tion equivalent to senior public service ex-aminations, or national examinations for spe-cialists and technicians, and has practiced patent matters and held a patent agent certifi-cate for more than three years; or
one has been contracted by the patent authori-ties as a full-time patent examiner for more than two years and has practiced patent mat-ters and held a patent agent certificate for more than five years.
"Patent practice" refers to the practices stipulated in Article 9 of the draft Act, including patent filing matters, patent opposition or cancellation matters, matters related to assignment, trust, pledge, licensing and compulsory licensing re-lated to patent rights, patent administrative ap-peals, patent administrative suits, as well as other patent matters prescribed in the Patent Act.
According to the draft Act, individuals qualified for practicing patent matters will be called "patent agents qualified under the Patent Agent Act" or "patent agents." The existing patent agents who are in practice are expected to apply to change their qualification status to that of patent agents qualified under the Patent Agent Act.