Special Court And Branch of Prosecutors’ Office to Be Established for Handling Cases Arising from Intellectual Property Rights.　Proposed Organic Act of Intellectual Property Court Passed Initial Legislative Reading. Proposed Qualification Requirements of Technical Examiners Remain Undecided.

The proposed Organic Act of Intellectual Property Court passed the initial legislative hearing at the relevant Legal and Judicial Joint Committee meeting just one day before the current congressional session ended on 30 May 2006.  However, enactment of the Organic Act is not likely to happen before the Legislators return for next congressional session or extraordinary session, if any.  There is not much dispute over the provisions of the proposed Organic Act except Article 16 which will be subject to negotiation among all parties.  The Judicial Yuan should be able to establish the Intellectual Property Court in March 2007 as scheduled.

 

Article 16 of the proposed Organic Act provides the qualification requirements of the technical examiner whose chief function is to assist the judge in determining special technical issues and whose opinion “could be the most import basis to the judge making the judgment.”  Therefore, some legislators uphold stricter requirements while others consider that may frustrate the willingness of those interested.

 

Cases to be tried and decided on by the Intellectual Property Court [IP Court] will involve the civil, criminal and administrative aspects of an action.:

 

(i) The civil aspect means the claim arising from disputes over the rights and interests in the intellectual property protected under the Patent Act, Trademark Act, Copyright Act, Optical Disc Act, Trade Secret Act, Integrated Circuit Layout Protection Act, Plant Variety And Seed Act, or Fair Trade Act, including the relevant proceedings such as perpetuation of evidence.  The IP Court will act as the district court and the superior court on the civil aspect of the action.

 

(ii) The criminal aspect will be the appeal taken from the judgment made by the district court (by adopting the ordinary proceeding, simplified proceeding, bargain proceeding) on the commission of the offenses provided in Articles 253 to 255, 317, 318 of the Criminal Code and violation of the Trademark Act, Copyright Act, the first paragraph of Article 35 of the Fair Trade Act in connection with the first paragraph of Article 20 of the same Act, and Article 36 in connection with subparagraph 5 of Article 36 of the same Act.

 

(iii) The administrative aspect will be the administrative proceedings on intellectual property rights related applications, invalidation, repeal proceedings, unfair competition complaint, etc. filed under the Patent Act, Trademark Act, Copyright Act, Optical Disc Act, Integrated Circuit Layout Protection Act, Plant Variety And Seed Act, and the relevant compulsory execution matters.

 

According to the proposed Organic Act, the Judicial Yuan is authorized to decide the location to build the IP Court and, where necessary, branch court(s) in consideration of the amount of cases filed and geographical distribution.  In addition, by operation of the principle that where there is a court, there shall be a prosecutors’ office of the same court level, the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office will set up an intellectual property branch with the staff required—1 general prosecutor, 2 chief prosecutors, and 12 prosecutors—to be selected from the current staff of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office.  (2006.05)

/EMA