萬國法律事務所

　　In January, the Legislative Yuan moved to increase the protection of intellectual property rights in Taiwan by enacting the Act for the Hearing of Intellectual Property Cases. The Act will be submitted to the president for promulgation once the Intellectual Property Court Organizational Act is passed.

　　The Act for the Hearing of Intellectual Property Cases contains 39 articles in five chapters that deal with general principles, civil litigation, criminal litigation, administrative litigation, and supplementary provisions. This new measure follows others including the revision of the Copyright Law to increase punishment for copying, establishment of the IPR Police protection brigade, and the large-scale increase of rewards for the uncovering of Internet copying. The main points of the new Act include the following:
 
1. Courts may undertake hearings via teleconferencing;

2. IPR cases are taken under a centralized jurisdiction, and a technical examiner is added to provide professional assistance during litigation or during the evidence protection process, to help with the collection of IPR evidence, and to protect business secrets, thereby promoting the one-time resolution of IRP disputes;

3. The “secrecy order system” is introduced, allowing the courts to issue, in accordance with a statement by the parties to the litigation or by a third party, a secrecy order so that the trial proceedings will not be made public and the reading, copying, and photographing of trial information will be restricted; and

4. In civil and criminal IPR cases, the courts should make their own determination about points of dispute as to whether or not there is cause for the revocation or abolishment of IPR, and should exclude the application of legal provisions calling for the stopping of the trial process (When courts heard IPR cases in the past, the litigation was frequently protracted by waiting for charges, judgments, and other administrative procedures, and this affected the rights of the litigants).