In order to tie in with the liberalization of national economic laws and regulations, to adapt to international regulations, and to complete processes of practical examinations, the Taiwan IPO researched and proposed amendments to the Patent Act after collecting opinions from the public. The main proposed amendments are as follows:

1. Adding a provision to restore the right of claiming international priority: If the applicant does not file applications within 12 months after the date of the first patent application for the same creation, but files applications within 2 months after the expiration of the time limit, the applicant still can claim priority.
2. Relaxing the applicability of the post-approval division: The applicability includes invention, utility model and design patents, and both the initial examination and re-examination. The time limit for division is changed from 1 month to 3 months.
3. Adding a provision to restore the right of requesting substantial examination: The applicant can restore the right within 2 months after the expiration of the time limit.
4. Increasing the types of legal use, including reproductions, public transmissions and translations, of patent applications after being laid open or published.
5. Stipulating that the authorization contract continues to exist for the transferee after the transfer of the patent right if the patent authorization contract is registered.
6. Stipulating the time limit of supplementing the reason or evidence by the invalidation requester, the legal effect of not being considered after the time limit, and stipulating the limitations and exceptions that the patentee may submit corrections during the examination period of the invalidation case.
7. Stipulating the time point when a utility model patent can be corrected: when the utility model patent is under invalidation examination and under statutory situations; as well as the request for the technical report of the utility model is accepted and the litigation case is pending. The examination of the correction of the utility model patent is changed to a substantial examination.
8. Extending the term of design patent protection from 12 to 15 years.
9. Amending the current stipulation that patent files such as application documents, description, claim(s), abstract, drawing(s) shall be kept permanently to permanent preservation for those having preservation value; and the rest should be periodically saved for different classifications for less than 30 years.
10. Improving other legal issues.
11. Clearly stipulating the applicable rules for the transition between old and new provisions.

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