Relaxed Conditions for Applicant Applying for AEP.

In recent years, the number of patent applications in Taiwan reached over 80,000 cases per year, including over 50,000 invention patent applications.  Facing with the tremendous amount of caseload, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), Ministry of Economic Affairs on 1 January 2009 launched a program called the Accelerated Examination Program (AEP) providing applicants with an effective channel to learn the examination results with respect to their patent applications.  Invention patent applications that are conformed to the specific requirements can apply for AEP.  That is, TIPO can expedite on the examination process and shorten its examination period under AEP.

From January 2009 till the end of October 2009, TIPO had accepted a total of 475 cases (Table 1) filed for accelerated examination, which is an average of 47.5 cases per month.  TIPO has served a total of 301 examination results (including examination opinions or written decisions), an average processing time of 52.5 days.

Using the implementation of Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) in countries like the U.S. and Japan as reference, starting from July 2006 till July 2009, within the three years period, the U.S. has signed with 10 countries for implementing PPH either in a permanent nature or as a pilot program.  Meanwhile, Japan has signed with nine countries for implementing the PPH program.  The average monthly PPH applications with the USPTO and JPO are 48.75 and 20.4 cases respectively.  However, the number of invention patent applications with the USPTO and JPO are eightfold the number of invention patent applications with the TIPO.

Please find below the details regarding the implementation of AEP for the period of January to October 2009:

1.　List of countries by applicant’s nationality (Table 2), Taiwanese applicants account for 41.1% (195 cases), whereas foreign applicants account for 58.9% (280 cases).  The top five foreign applicants are: the U.S. (83 cases), Japan (75 cases), Singapore (32 cases), Germany (19 cases) and England (9 cases).

2.　List of countries with regard to claiming the corresponding granted foreign patents (Table 3), the top two countries in ranking orders are: 259 corresponding granted U.S. patents (56%) and 68 corresponding granted Mainland China patents (15%).  Japan came to third place with 50 corresponding patents claimed (11%) and Europe came to fourth place with 46 patents claimed (10%).

TIPO for ensuring to offer better protection for the patent applicant’s rights and interests, and better flexibility for applicant when applying for AEP has decided to review expanding the scope of this program.  According to the amended provisions, applicant may apply for accelerated examination for the invention patent applications that have been substantively examined and allowed by foreign patent offices and meet either one of the following conditions:

1.　Where any corresponding foreign patent application has not yet been granted but has already received the examination opinions or search report issued by the USPTO, JPO or EPO.

2.　If an invention application is required for the applicant to practice for commercial purpose.

The above amendments are scheduled to take effects on 1 January 2010.  In principle, after the required documents for applying accelerated examination are submitted, the applicant may expect to receive TIPO’s examination result within 6 or 9 months.

Table 1: Statistics on applications for accelerated examinations (Jan. – Oct., 2009)
Time frame	Taiwan	Foreign Countries	Total
January	8	3	11
February	12	5	17
March	13	25	38
April	18	32	50
May	12	37	49
June	18	37	55
July	17	38	55
August	19	37	56
September	19	34	53
October	59	32	91
Total	195	280	4751
Note 1: Including 18 applications that are not qualified or that have been filed previously.

Table 2: Statistics on the applicant’s nationality applying for accelerated examination
Applicant’s nationality	No. of applications	Applicant’s nationality	No. of applications
Taiwan	195	Sweden	7
United States	83	Italy	6
Japan	75	Hungary	6
Singapore	32	France	4
Germany	19	Bermuda	3
England	9	Hong Kong	3
Korea	8	Luxembourg	1
Switzerland	7	Spain	1
Netherlands	7	Czech Republic	1
Canada	7	Cayman Islands	1

Table 3: Statistics on corresponding granted foreign patents
Country	No. of applications	Percentage
United States	259	56%
China	68	15%
Japan	50	11%
Europe	46	10%
Korea	17	4%
England	10	2%
Germany	5	1%
Australia	4	1%
Malaysia	1	--
Sweden	1	--
Total	461	100%

(2009.12)
/DC