Taiwan Chips Act Sets Research and Development Spending at NT6 Billion The Ministry of Economic Affairs sets the research and development investment threshold at NT6 billion for companies to qualify for tax incentives under recently approved amendments to the Act for Industrial Innovation – Taiwan’s version of the US Chips and Science Act.  The announcement was made on May 2, 2023.  That sum was slightly less than the government’s original threshold of between NT5 billion and NT10 billion.  However, it is much higher than the average annual R & D expenditure of NT3 billion that the nation’s top 100 companies have committed to over the past few years.  Another requirement is that companies need to set aside at least 6% of their revenue for R & D in order to receive the tax incentives.  The targets of the government’s initiative are those companies in Taiwan that are strategically important to global supply chains.  It is also hoped that the program will encourage more overseas Taiwanese businesses to invest back home.  Besides semiconductor firms, the program is also applicable to companies that are capable of developing world-leading or innovative and scalable technology in strategic industries such as 5G, electric vehicles and low Earth Orbit Satellites.  The new tax incentives will be in place for seven years, starting this year, and the ministry will start accepting applications next year based on their investments this year.  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is widely considered to be on top of what is likely to be a short list of companies eligible for tax breaks as the world’s biggest contract chipmaker plans to allocate about...

Taiwan Revises Enforcement Rules of the Patent Act The revisions to the Enforcement Rules of the Patent Act went into effect on May 1, 2023.  A summary of the key points are as follows: To determine whether any amendments are made in divisional applications, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office shall carefully review whether their subject matter has extended beyond the content of the earlier application as filed. Applicants are required to attach a marked document indicating differences or changes in the application, with added parts underlined and deleted ones struck through, along with a relevant explanation of any and all alterations made, thus improving efficiency in the examination of divisional applications. In accordance with Article 27 of the Patent Act, if a biological material has been deposited in a depository designated by a foreign country in its territory with which Taiwan recognizes the effects of deposits based on reciprocity, and the certificate of deposit issued by said foreign depository is submitted within the time period prescribed, the applicant is exempted from the requirement of making a deposit in Taiwan. Presently, foreign depository institutions that have been reciprocally recognized by Taiwan are international depositary authorities under Article 7 of the Budapest Treaty.  These authorities shall issue documents that include certificates of deposit and viability statements, a practice that Taiwan also adopts.  In order to promote mutual recognition of biological material deposits between Taiwan and other countries, documents issued by depositories without the status of an international depository authority must include a viability statement. Taiwan Legislative Yuan Approves Draft Revision of Trademark Act The Economics Committee of the Legislative Yuan reviewed...

TIPO Issues Draft Amendments to Regulations Governing the Determination of Patent Term Extension Draft amendments have been made to Articles 4 and 10 of the Regulations Governing the Determination of Patent Term Extension, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) announced recently.  Firstly, the amendment to Article 4, Paragraph 2 states that the specific patent agency may rely on documents that indicate the period of domestic and/or foreign clinical trials conducted for obtaining a marketing approval of a drug from the central competent authority in charge of the business as criteria for determining the extension of the patent term.  The Specific Patent Agency does not need to send the documents to the central competent authority for confirmation.  Another part of Article 4 states that during examination for marketing approval, the central competent authority in charge of the business shall confirm documents that indicate the period of domestic and/or foreign clinical trials and a data sheet for data exclusivity and domestic and/or foreign clinical trials submitted by an applicant.  If there is any difference between the results confirmed by the central competent authority and the data sheet submitted by the applicant, the difference shall be corrected on the data sheet and approved by the central competent authority.  Since the central competent authority has confirmed the period of domestic and/or foreign clinical trials conducted for obtaining a marketing approval, the specific patent agency can determine and calculate the period of domestic and/or foreign clinical trials based on the data sheet confirmed by the central competent authority.  Hence the proviso ‘sent by the specific patent agency’ in the current regulation is deleted.  This...

TSMC Tops List of Patent Applications in Taiwan For the seventh consecutive year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, took the top spot among patent applicants in Taiwan.  The latest figures just in are for 2022, and TSMC filed a total of 1,534 applications, which was actually a 21% drop from 2021.  All of TSMC’s patent applications were for invention patents.  Last year, the total number of invention patent applications stood at 50,242 cases, which was a 10-year high.  Of the foreign applicants, US-based semiconductor equipment supplier Applied Materials Inc. last year was Taiwan’s largest patent seeker, filing 881 applications comprising 847 invention patents, 2 utility model patents and 32 design patents.  Qualcomm dropped from first to second place with 763 applications, which was 10% lower than 2021.  South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics Co. took third place in the foreign applicants’ rankings with 675 applications, an increase of 30%, followed by Japan-based semiconductor supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd. with 487 applications.  Most of the foreign patent applicants were from the semiconductor, information technology and chemical industries.  Categorized by country, Japan held the top spot with 13,128 applications, the US was second with 8,517 and China third with 4,424.  Amongst local applicants, PC brand Acer was second last year with a total of 530 patent applications, which was an increase of 15%.  Third was flat panel maker AUO Corp. with 505, up 7% and ahead of smartphone IC designer MediaTek Inc. with 412 applications in fourth position.  It should be noted that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. was not in the leading ranks of applicants because a...