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II
IPR SERVICES
Examination Results of Design Patent Applications
Unit: Case, %
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Allowance
Cases
6,068
6,794
7,215
7,393
7,514
Percentage 87.0% 87.9% 88.9% 85.2% 87.8%
Rejection
Cases
817
676
606
733
841
Percentage 11.7% 8.8% 7.5% 8.4% 9.8%
Others (Including Withdrawals
and Not Accepted)
Cases
88
253
295
552
209
Percentage
1.3% 3.3% 3.6% 6.4% 2.4%
Note
1. Percentage is derived using the number of total disposals as the denominator and allowance, rejection, and others
as the numerators.
2. The number of total disposals includes allowance, rejection, and others.
Reexamination
4,154
4,284
4,834
7,354
8,585
2,758
3,305
4,467
6,407
7,020
3,295
3,179
3,633
4,200
5,747
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Number Pending
Number of Applications
Number of Total Disposals
Invention Patent Reexamination
Note
“The Number of Total Disposals” includes allow-
ance, rejection, and others (withdrawal and not ac-
cepted).
Note
Each figure in this chart is an average value for the
end of each year.
The average disposal pendency for
design patent in 2014 was 9.3 months,
and there was a slight increase of 0.3
months from the previous year. How-
ever, the average disposal pendency
over the last three years has maintained
around 9 months.
10.7
10.1
9.2
9.0
9.3
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Average Disposal Pendency for
Design Patent Applications (Months)
2014 accumulated a 16.7% increase of
pending reexamination cases from the
previous year.
To increase the number of reex-
amination disposals, TIPO adjusted its
manpower to better match patent
applications with the examiners’ area
of expertise. Hence from 2012 to 2014,
the number of total disposals grew at a
tremendous rate from 14.3% to 36.8%.
In contrast to the fast growth of reex-
amination requests in the previous three
years, reexamination requests finally
leveled off in 2014. Over the past two
years, the sudden increase in the num-
ber of conclusions of examination had
led to an increase in the number of re-
examination requests. As a result, TIPO in