The draft amendments to the Trademark Law completed the scrutiny process of the Economic Committee of the Legislative Yuan on May 9, 2011. The main concerns of this scrutiny focus on the following:

1. to enlarge the scope of the subject matter protected under the trademark registration, such as dynamic trademarks and holographic trademarks;
2. to specify the various types of trademark usage behaviors;
3. to abolish the requirement of payment of the registration fee in two installments in order to save trademark right holders from unintentional delay of the second installment;
4. to amend the regulations on co-existing applications of one single trademark under the consent of the trademark right holder, except in cases where the later application has any obvious defect to bar registration;
5. to introduce the mechanism of rehabilitation of rights in cases where trademark right holders unintentionally fail to comply with the time limits for paying registration fees;
6. to introduce the regulations on burden of proof when applying for assessment or revocation of another person’s trademark registration;
7. to specify the requirements on damages and calculation of damages compensation amount;
8. to amend the requirements of trademark infringement;
9. to stipulate the authorization in law allowing customs to seize goods ex officio; and,
10. to stipulate the regulations on certificate of origin marks and trademarks of origin groups.

This version of the draft amendments still needs to pass three readings of the Legislative Yuan before becoming law.