Cross Taiwan Strait (Taiwan & China) Agreement on IP Protection to come into effect – mutual recognition of priority claims to be realized, official corresponding platform to be set up and institution for negotiation and arbitration to be launched.

As of June, 29, the “Cross Taiwan Strait (Taiwan & China) Agreement on IP Protection” was signed. This breakthrough has above all  realized the long-standing suspense of mutual recognition of priority claims between Taiwan and China. In the near future, it is agreed that subcommittees would be created to attend to patent, trademarks, copyrights, and species rights in specific and concrete programs. It is also projected that anti-counterfeiting institutions would be further created, so that the effective surveillance on markets both real and virtual could be realized, and produces with false mark of origin would be more sufficiently guarded, while famous marks and genuine marks of origin could be duly protected.

There was a history of rancid plagiarism in China on agricultural and flower species newly developed in Taiwan, and the damage spill further to the global markets while even the marks of origin would be fabricated and the counterfeits pass off as the genuine goods. Upon conclusion of the above agreement, China has rendered consent to duly protect newly developed Taiwanese species and relevant results of Taiwanese research and development, and this consensus is viewed as a major breakthrough.

Furthermore, in light of the drastically increasing patent and trademark applications filed by the Taiwanese in China, it was also proposed and agreed to set up scheme where more efficient examination and publication data search network would be provided to the examiners to facilitate timely grant of due protection, preventing damage suffered from the Taiwanese merchants amidst unfair competition or infringement of patent or trademark in China.

However, as both Taiwan and China are already members to the WTO, there are certain limits to excessive favoritisms that could be introduced to both sides considering the most favored party treatment clause applicable to the rest of the protocol members. (2010.06)
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