Taiwan Legal Update: Taiwan and Japan Sign Two Mutual Cooperation Memorandums

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The Taiwan-Japan Relations Association and the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association signed a memorandum of cooperation on “Patent Review Highway (PPH)” and “Electronic Exchange of  Design Patent Priority Documents”.

Taiwan and Japan have previously entered into the PPH pilot project, and it was revised to the advanced type (PPH MOTTAINAI) and extended. As of September this year, the number of applications for the PPH pilot program in Taiwan and Japan rose to 3,426, the highest in comparison with the PPH projects in five other countries.

Given the excellent performance of the implementation of the PPH pilot program in Taiwan, the IP Office and the Japan Patent Office agreed to change to a permanent cooperation plan from May 1, 2020, after the trial project period to continue to provide Taiwanese applicants with a stable and convenient PPH service.

In October 2013, Taiwan signed an electronic exchange memorandum on patent priority documents, which was applied for invention patents and new patent applications. Since its implementation, applicants from both countries have used it extensively. To expand the service, the Intellectual Property Office and the Japan Patent Office decided to include the design patent in the scope of electronic exchange of the priority certification documents, which can save the design applicants labour time for paper delivery, simplify the multinational application process, and prove the priority. The exchange mechanism for documents will be more complete.

At present, both parties are actively carrying out system development and testing. It is expected that this service will be officially available in April 2021.

Taiwan-Japan economic and trade relations have remained close. Japan has applied for the most patents for foreigners in Taiwan. It won 14,017 in 2018 years, and 12,871 and 1,224 invention patents and design patents ranked first.

The number of applications for Japanese patent applications is also nearly 3,000. Through these two Taiwan-Japan cooperation projects, Taiwan looks forward to opening up a deeper international development space for Taiwan’s related industries, and more applicants can benefit from it.

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