Newsletter
PATENT PRIORITY EXAMINA-TION GUIDELINES AMENDED
The IPO recently amended Chapter 5 of its Pat-ent Examination Guidelines: Priority Claim Examination Guidelines and announced it on 8 January 2001.
According to Article 25 of the Patent Law, to lawfully claim priority for an ROC patent ap-plication, an applicant must make a declaration of the priority claim at the time of filing, and must state in the application the filing date, ap-plication number and the filing country of the corresponding basic application. Within three months from the date of filing, the applicant must submit application document evidencing the acceptance of the corresponding basic applica-tion by the government of the country concerned (priority documents). An applicant who fails to make such a declaration at the time of filing, or who fails to submit a priority document within the time period, loses the right to claim priority.
The previous guidelines, which took effect on 20 March 1998, provided that to lawfully claim priority, the applicant must submit the original priority document, along with a photocopy of their cover page and its Chinese-language translation, within three months from the date of filing.
Because Article 25 of the Patent Law does not explicitly require that the priority document to be submitted within the three-month time limit must be an original document, the IPO has amended the relevant wording of the guidelines to the ef-fect that within three months from the date of filing, the applicant should submit application documents evidencing the acceptance of the corresponding basic application by the govern-ment of the country concerned; otherwise, the priority claim should not be accepted.
Under the amended guidelines, an applicant who is unable to submit an original priority document within the three-month time limit may substitute a photocopy or a fax copy of the priority docu-ment first. But to maintain his priority claim, he must still submit the original priority document within a period set by the IPO.