萬國法律事務所

Recently, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan acted against the fraudulent advertising of pharmaceuticals by revising the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act so that penalty fines for illegal advertising are increased.  President Chen promulgated the revised Act on 17 May 2006.  The main items of the revised Act are identified below:

1. Where advertisements that have been approved, and which subsequently are found to contain content that poses a health risk, or for which the methods of publishing or broadcasting are determined to pose health threats or to generate serious concerns regarding such risks, the agency that originally granted approval shall order the pharmaceutical company to cease publishing or broadcasting the subject advertisements and improve the same within a set period of time.  If such improvements are not completed in a timely manner, the advertisements will be cancelled.

2. The fines that may be imposed for illegal advertising of pharmaceuticals have been increased dramatically from the previous range of NT$ 10,000 - NT$ 50,000 to the current range of NT$ 600,000 - NT$ 25 million.  Moreover, these fines can be levied continuously until the date on which the offending company ceases the illegal advertising.  In order to increase the level of responsibility that broadcasters owe to their audiences, broadcasters must now maintain the names, ID card numbers or business registration numbers, and addresses of the advertisers for inspection by the authorities.