Taiwan Fee-based Trademark Accelerated Examination Will Be Launched
Date: 10 July 2023
【Volume 112】
On 9 May 2023, the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan passed the Partial Amendments of the Trademark Act. The major highlight is the newly added “accelerated examination” mechanism in Article 19 and Article 104, which is expected to reduce the trademark examination period to within two months, meeting the needs of the industry and the international standards.
The new mechanism is scheduled to be implemented in less than a year, and the prospective criteria for applying accelerated trademark examination are as follows:
1. The primary criterion: “Urgency”
The IPO wishes to encourage applicants who truly have urgent needs to apply for accelerated examination. Urgent scenarios include situations where the applicant needs to commercialize their IP or the goods are ready for immediate sale. Therefore, applicants should provide detailed facts and reasons of urgency when applying for accelerated examination.
2. The second criterion: “User charge”
Since processing accelerated applications will inevitably affect the progress of other applications, applicants of the accelerated applications should pay a higher examination fee. The official fee for an accelerated examination is planned to increase from NTD 3,000 to NTD 9,000, which includes an additional NTD 6,000 fee for acceleration.
Wisdom Suggested Strategies
To effectively utilize the accelerated examination mechanism, applicants should ensure that all the application documents are in order and all the designated goods and services are IPO-recommended descriptions before filing the application. Otherwise, once the IPO issues an Office Action, the application process may take longer and the benefits from reduced examination period will be wasted from filing responses.
