BY BY TOMMY C. C. TSAI

The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) announced a new measure for acknowledging claim of priority of a design patent application: “With regard to claiming priority of a design patent application, in the future, only when it is discovered that the date of an earlier-filed application or the date of publication of relevant prior art falls between the claimed priority date and the filing date of a later-filed application, the TIPO shall determine whether to recognize the priority claim, based on the certified priority document. Otherwise, in principle, the priority claim will be published in the Patent Gazette as requested by the applicant. Where an applicant claims two or more priorities in respect of a design patent application, based on the aforementioned principle, the priorities claimed will still all be published in the Patent Gazette. However, this does not mean that all of or part of the priorities claimed are approvable. The determination depends on whether the contents of the priority claims conform to the rules relating to ‘identical designs.’ Such substantial determination will be necessary if prior art is found to have been published between the filing date of the application and the priority date.”

In the past, if an applicant claimed two or more priorities in respect of a design patent application, an Office Action requesting the applicant to select one of the priorities claimed would be issued by the TIPO. After the aforementioned measure comes into effect, claiming multiple priorities in respect of a design patent application will be acceptable and if no earlier-filed application or relevant prior art is found, the TIPO will publish all the priorities claimed by the applicant in the Patent Gazette.