A: Yes. According to the rule, “the document(s) for filing a patent application or other proceedings shall be in Chinese”, in Article 3 paragraph 2 of Enforcement Rules of the Patent Act, the information in the patent application data sheet shall be indicated in Chinese. If only foreign language is recorded, TIPO will inform the applicant to translate that into Chinese.

A: According to Article 38 of Taiwan Patent Act, a request to TIPO for substantive examination of an invention patent application may be made by any person within three years after the filing date of the patent application, the invention patent application shall be deemed as withdrawal if the substantive examination is not requested within three years. Since anyone may request for substantive examination, the applicant may submit an [Application for Withdrawal of Patent Application] to avoid the other people requesting the substantive examination, if the applicant determines no need for substantive examination.

A: The situation is under the category of “grace period”. Basically, the design, which is industrially applicable, shall be deemed as lacking of novelty and inventive step, when the same or similar design is disclosed in a printed publication, publicly exploited, or publicly known prior to the filing of the patent application.
However, if the applicant files a design patent application within six months from the date of the disclosure made by or against the applicant’s will, in order to prevent the applicant from being unable to obtain patent due to the publicizing behavior before filing, the application may not be deemed as lacking of novelty and inventive step by claiming grace period.
In other words, the design patent application related to the product, which has been publicly sold in the market, may claim grace period with the requirement of filing within six months from the earliest date of publicly selling.

A: When applying the utility model patent application and claiming a Chinese patent application as the fundamental priority application, the application shall be filed within twelve months from next day of the filing date of the fundamental priority application. If two or more than two fundamental priority applications are used, the period is calculated from next day of the filing date of the earliest fundamental priority application. Further, the priority certificate document issued by the country, which the priority is claimed, shall be submitted within sixteen months from the earliest priority date.

A: The applicant may prepare the application form for advancing the laying-open of the invention patent application and pay application fee of NT 1000 to request the advance of laying-open (Patent Act Art. 37, Second paragraph)

The applicant may submit above request upon filing the invention patent application. However, TIPO will not examine the feasibility and proceed to the laying open until the requested documents are completed.

The application form and examples for advancing the laying-open may be downloaded from TIPO website (the application form is downloadable in TIPO Chinese website)

A: No.

The aim of publishing the invention patent application is to prevent redundant research and wasted investment, and to promote industrial technology.

The invention patent application will be polished after a period of eighteen (18) months since its filing date (where a priority is claimed, the calculation of time period is set forth on the basis of the priority date).

The applicant cannot request to late-publish the invention patent application lest the above goals cannot be fulfilled.

A: Certificate of the priority right shall be original copy that is issued and signed by the patent receiving bureau of foreign country or member of WTO. The photocopy of certificate of the priority right is not allowed to be used. Further, the photocopy of certificate of the priority right that is notarized or certified by the court or the other bureau is forbidden to be submitted as a substitution. However, when two or more applications of the same applicant have the same priority right claim of foreign basis application, if original copy of certificate of the priority right is already being submitted for one of the applications, the photocopy of full certificate can be submitted as the substitution for the other applications, and the application, for which the original copy is already submitted, shall be noted.

If the applicant has submitted the first page photocopy of certificate of the priority right within 16 months from the earliest priority date (design application is within 10 months from the earliest priority date), TIPO will inform the applicant to submit original copy of the same document with the photocopy within a specified time period. The priority right claim will be deemed as non-claimed if the applicant fails to submit or the  document is incomplete after submission in the specified time period. On the other hand, from December 2, 2013, certificate of the priority right for invention or utility model application between TIPO and JPO can be applied through electronic exchange, the applicant only needs to state “receiving country, filing date, application number, patent category, access code” in the application form and does not need to submit certificate of the priority right.

A: The time period of submitting certificate of the priority right is within 16 months from the earliest priority date for invention or utility model application and within 10 months from the earliest priority date for design application.

When multiple priority rights are claimed, the time period of submitting all certificates of the priority rights is calculated from the earliest priority date. For example, the applicant claims three priority rights such as A, B, and C, and the priority dates are sequentially as date a, date b, and date c. If the applicant only submits certificate of the priority right B within 16 months from the earliest priority date (date a) (design application is within 10 months from the earliest priority date), the priority rights A and C will be deemed as non-claimed. The claim for re-calculating the time period of submitting certificate of the priority right C from the second earliest priority date (date b) is forbidden.

The time period of submitting certificate of the priority right is a statutory period, and thus extension of time period is not allowed. However, if the applicant has submitted the photocopy of certificate of the priority right within the statutory period, TIPO will inform the applicant to submit original copy of the same document with the photocopy within a specified time period.

A: No. All of the applicants of the patent application need to be the citizen of WTO member, or the citizen of the foreign country having admitted priority right with Taiwan, or the person having residence or business office in the region of WTO member or reciprocal nation, to claim priority right.