Taiwan IPO Publishes Statistics on 2013Q1.

According to Taiwan IPO's report on 2013Q1, new patent filings amount to 20,097 in total in the quarter, representing a 3.61% increase over the same period last year.  2,543 of the new filings are for design patent, representing a remarkable growth of 35.94%, with 1,205 filed by foreign nationals which is the highest of the quarterly counts of design patent applications filed by foreign applicants since 1999.  With respect to trademark filings, Taiwan IPO received a total of 16,962 new filings in the quarter, representing a 2.21% decrease over the same period last year due to the decrease in the total amount of applications filed by local nationals.  Counted by the national origin of applicants, Japan followed by the USA once again tops the chart of counts of new filings for invention patent by foreign nationals as well as that for trademark.  According to Taiwan IPO's report, invention patent new filings by Chinese nationals decreased by 35.92% over the same period last year.  On the other hand, Samsung's increasing number of new filings on display products and related technologies has drawn wide attention to its global patent mapping.

According to Taiwan IPO, the 3.61% increase in new filings in 2013Q1 (totaling 20,097 as a whole) over the same period last year is mainly attributable to a remarkable 35.94% increase in the new filings for design patents which amount to 2,534 including 1,329 filed by local applicants and 1,205 by foreign nationals, representing an increase of 18.87% and 61.53% respectively where the amount of foreign-national new filings is the highest of all quarterly counts since 1999.  Counted by the total amount of new filings, Apple Inc. tops the chart of foreign-national applicants of the quarter with 126 new filings followed by BMW with 51 new filings.  Taiwan IPO indicated the remarkable increase in new filings for design mentioned above is attributable to the most recent amendment to the Patent Act which came into force on 1 January 2013 opening door to new patentable subject matters including partial designs, computer icons, GUI and articles belonging to the same class and customarily sold or used together.

With respect to invention patents, new filings amount to 11,593 in total in the quarter (about the same as in 2012Q1) with 4,832 filed by local applicants and 6,761 by foreign nationals.  By national origin of foreign applicants, Japan once again takes the lead with 3,470 new filings followed by the USA (1,679) indicating the continued warming of Taiwan-Japan and Taiwan-US economic cooperation.  South Korea (334) and Germany (282) take the third and the fourth places respectively on the chart.  In contrast, new filings by Chinese nationals, 182 in total, represents a decrease of 35.92%.  The top ten foreign corporate applicants (except Samsung Display) are either Japanese or American with the top three being Tokyo Electron Limited (138), Apple Inc. (117), and Nitto Denko Corporation (116).  Qualcomm (81) takes the fifth place followed by Samsung Display (79) and AUO (75).  Hon Hai Precision with 580 new filings still heads the chart of counts of new filings by local corporate applicants in the quarter.  Wistron and Acer take the second and the third places on the chart with 100 and 95 new filings respectively.

With respect to new trademark filings, according to Taiwan IPO, the quarter ended with a total of 16,962 new filings, representing a 2.21% decrease over the same period last year, which decrease is attributable to a 2.92% decrease in the number of new filings by local nationals (12,513) as the count of new filings by foreign nationals (4,449) remains nearly unchanged from the same period last year.  Counted by the national origin of foreign applicants, Japan still takes the lead with a total of 891 new filings, immediately followed by the USA with 873 new filings.  The PRC takes the third place with 658 new filings.

According to Taiwan IPO, the number of new filings for invention patent by PRC nationals indeed has been on the increase in the past two years but new entries to the top 100 corporate applicants' list in the past three quarters are mostly Taiwanese companies.  Moreover, the amount of new filings for invention patent by PRC nationals in the quarter shows an obvious decline with only two Chinese companies entering the top 100 list and they are TPK (Xiamen), a touch control manufacturer with 15 new filings, and Hon Fu Jin Precision (Wuhan), a precision machinery and tooling manufacturer with 14 new filings.  There are other well-known Chinese corporate applicants seeking invention patents but the amount of their new filings is insignificant.

Also, Taiwan IPO successfully completed the examination of a total of 13,473 long-pending invention patent applications in the quarter (representing a 33.66% increase in efficiency over the same period last year) thereby successfully reducing the amount of pending applications from over 150,000 to 148,944 as of the end of the quarter, which reduction is also owed to a 3.05% decrease in the amount of requests for substantive examination (9,908 in total).  Owed to said efficiency, the average time Taiwan IPO needs to complete the examination of a patent application with a conclusion is cut down to 43.63 months from 46.14 months in 2012.  In the meantime, a total of 15,075 preliminary notices were issued representing a 43.42% increase in efficiency.  Taiwan IPO expects to reduce the total amount of pending patent applications to under 140,000 by the end of 2013.  (2013.05)
/EMA