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Newsletters

Deep & Far Newsletter 2025 ©
Sep (1)

Taiwan IP Updates  ¡V September 2025

By Lyndon 

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Taiwan and France Starts PPH

The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) and the Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle (INPI) have inked an agreement to start a PPH pilot program on 1 July, 2025.  The program will automatically be fully implemented after 30 June, 2027.  Previously, PPH programs have been implemented between the United States, Japan, Spain, Korea, and Poland.  The following requirements must be met:

  1. A petition document must be filed for the PPH program.
  2. A copy of the claims determined to be allowable along with translations must be submitted.
  3. A copy of references cited by the examiner must be submitted.
  4. A table showing how the claims of the Taiwanese application correspond to those of the corresponding French application must be provided.
  5. Using the Taiwanese application as an example, both the Taiwanese application and the corresponding French application must have the same earliest date.
  6. The corresponding French application must comprise at least one claim determined to be allowable in the most recent office action.
  7. All claims, either at the time of filing for accelerated examination under the PPH or at a following amendment, must sufficiently correspond to one or more claims indicated as allowable by the INPI.
  8. The applicant should have already been notified that substantive examination will begin shortly, and that TIPO has not already issued a first office action.

 

Taiwan Prosecutors Indict TSMC Employees

Three former and current Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. employees were indicted in late August for allegedly stealing sensitive trade secrets involving the company’s advanced 2-nanometer process.  The three suspects have been charged with the theft of trade secrets and violating the National Security Act by obtaining national core technology secrets for use abroad.  TSMC reported the case to the Intellectual Property Branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office after they became aware of unusual activities and conducted an internal investigation.  After securing evidence, prosecutors received court approval to detain the three suspects incommunicado.  The outline of the case seems to be that a former TSMC employee who subsequently went on to work for Tokyo Electron Ltd. got in touch with two current employees and requested some trade secret information to help Tokyo Electron Ltd. in their bid for more TSMC supply contracts.  The case is still ongoing as the prosecutors need to find out if any other parties are involved.  According to the prosecution, this is the first case involving unauthorized access to Taiwan’s national core technology that violates the National Security Act.

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