Accelerated Examination Program to Clear Pileup of Pending Patent Applications.

There are 80,000 patent applications streaming in TIPO each year, which reflects Taiwan’s world top patent application-to-population ratio and also leads to a huge pileup of more than 140,000 pending applications in early 2009 as opposed to TIPO examiners’ normal caseload of only 45,000 applications each year.  To cope with the overload, TIPO adjusted the examination procedures by having examination outsourced to TIPO-engaged examiners, collecting examination fees according to the number of claims, and extending scope of applicability for accelerated examination.

Under the current regulation, charge of NTD8,000 is overall applicable to all patent applications, regardless of the total number of claims of a proposed patent.  From now on, surcharge will be requested for additional claims.

In addition, according to the “Accelerated Examination Program” launched in January 1, 2009 (“AEP”), invention patent applications for substantive examination at TIPO that have foreign counterparts approved upon substantive examination by a foreign patent authority are eligible for accelerated examination.

Between January and September 2009, TIPO had accepted a total of 384 applications filed for accelerated examination, 309 among which were submitted with all required documentation and thus acceptable to undergo accelerated examination, and TIPO had already issued examination notices to 252 of them within a period of no more than six (6) months as TIPO published.  After one-year trial of this program with good performance that shows it an effective expedited channel, TIPO decided to continue the accelerated examination program and increase two additional grounds for eligibility of AEP; that is, the applications have foreign counterparts for which the EPO, JPO, OR USPTO has issued Office Action and search report but not yet reached a final decision, and the applications whose implementation is commercially essential. (2009.10)
/CCS