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VI
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE AND COOPERATION
VI. INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
AND COOPERATION
Over the years, TIPO has spared no
effort to enhance Taiwan’s prominence
in bilateral and multilateral international
venues, and to strengthen cross-strait
IPR exchanges and cooperation to stay
abreast of international trends. Given
the excellent results of the TIPO-JPO
PPH pilot program, both sides agreed to
extend the program for another three
years under the stronger framework
of PPH MOTTAINAI. On November 20,
Taiwan and Japan signed a Memoran-
dum to mutually recognize the deposit
of biological materials. In addition, the
Taiwan-US Symposium on Trade Secrets,
Taiwan-EU Conference, Cross-strait Fo-
rums on Patent, Trademark, and Copy-
right, as well as the biannual Taiwan-EU
Working Group Videoconference were
held to strengthen Taiwan’s exchanges
and cooperation in IPR issues with major
nations in the world and mainland Chi-
na.
▓
Cooperation in Examination
1
Patent Prosecution Highway
(PPH) Pilot Program
TIPO began the TIPO-JPO PPH Pi-
lot Program in May 2012. As of the end
of March 2014, TIPO had received 817
requests. This program expired at the
end of April, and both offices agreed
to modify the current program into PPH
MOTTAINAI and continue its pilot run for
three more years starting May 1, 2014.
Specifically, this new PPH MOTTAINAI is
an enhanced version of the PPH pro-
grams signed with other IP offices. Under
this new pilot, the examination result of
the office of first filing (OFF) no longer
has primacy over that of the office of
second filing (OSF). In other words, if one
of the signing parties (OFF or OSF) has
already issued an examination result,
the applicant may use such result to file
a request for PPH with another party. This
new pilot program will further patent ex-
amination cooperation between both
offices.
Exchange of Patent Examiners
TIPO-JPO
TIPO and JPO have frequent ex-
changes of examiners. In February, JPO
sent four invention patent examiners,
and again in December sent two design
patent examiners to Taiwan to share ex-