Proposed Amendment to Taiwan’s Trademark Act to Allow Motion, Aroma and Holographs to be Registered

Taiwan’s Trademark Act (the “Act”) was last amended in 2003 to allow color, sound and three-dimensional shapes to be registered as trademarks. Recent discussions have led to the proposal to further liberalize the acceptable types of trademarks to include motion, aroma and holographs. Currently, a trademark may be composed of a word, design, symbol, color, sound, three-dimensional shape or a combination of the foregoing. Of course, a trademark must be sufficiently distinctive for relevant consumers of the goods to recognize it as identifying the goods or services it relates, and to differentiate such goods from those of others. Nevertheless, in order for these new types of marks to be registered, they must be reduced to a paper-based representation, which may or may not present difficulty in practice, a question to be answered in the future.

Moreover, a priority in the filing date is proposed to be granted to anyone who first uses his mark in a government sponsored exhibition if an application is made within 6 months of the exhibition. The is regarded as a device to curb “squatter” of another’s mark, who takes advantage of the current system that recognizes the principle of “first to register”.

In addition, an applicant will be permitted to revive an application cancelled due to inadvertent nonpayment of government fees within due time.