Newsletter
COUNTERFEIT TRADEMARKS ILLEGAL EVEN IF UNUSED
The Trademark Law defines "use" of a trade-mark as its application to goods or to related packaging, containers, labels, instructions, price lists or other similar articles, and the possession, display or distribution of items so marked, for the purpose of sale. In practice the courts have mostly taken the view that where a counterfeited trademark is discovered before it is used, there is no offence under the Trademark Law or any other law. But in a 2001 criminal appeals judgment in a case involving counterfeit cos-metic articles, the Tainan Branch of the Taiwan High Court ruled that where a trademark has been counterfeited but manufacture of the goods has not been completed, although there is no offence under the Trademark Law, such action still constitutes an offence of falsifying a trade-mark, as defined by Article 253 of the Penal Code.