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In Taiwan, the court fee must be advanced by the plaintiff when filing a civil suit although the losing party will eventually be responsible for the court fee. The amount of the court fee payable depends on the total value of the claims, and the court fee is 1.1% for the first instance and 1.65% for the second and third instances, respectively.
For an infringement case, the plaintiff usually claims damages and seeks a permanent injunction. While it would be easy to determine the court fee payable for an infringement case where only damages are claimed, it would not be the case for an infringement case where a permanent injunction is additionally sought. With regard to the value of a permanent injunction claim, according to the consensus reached in a seminar held by the Judicial Yuan in 2009, since it would be extremely difficult to assess the value, it should be fixed at NT$1,650,000 (approximately US$55,000, which is the minimum claim amount for an appeal to the court of third instance) in accordance with Article 77-12 of the Code of Civil Procedure and relevant regulations. It was also concluded that the value of the damages claim and the permanent injunction claim should not be cumulative. Therefore, only the claim considered by the plaintiff s to be more important should be considered in calculating the court fee, usually the one with a higher value.
However, according to some judges of the Intellectual Property Court, the Supreme Court passed two resolutions on 12 and 19 March 2013 saying that the value of the damages claim on damages and that of the permanent injunction claim should be cumulative, which means that both values should be taken into account when calculating the court fee, and that the courts should conduct an investigation before concluding whether it is difficult to assess the value of a permanent injunction claim.
The two resolutions will likely result in prolonged trials since the courts will have to conduct an investigation to determine the difficulty in assessing a permanent injunction claim and the parties will likely argue over such issue in court. In addition, the court fee to be advanced by the plaintiff will be increased.
