Newsletter
ROC AND AUSTRIA RECIPRO-CALLY RECOGNIZE PATENT AND TRADEMARK PRIORITY
The ROC and Austria recently established re-ciprocity for claiming priorities for patent and trademark applications made by nationals of each other according to its own laws. The In-tellectual Property Office announced on 3 June 2000 that from 15 June 2000, applications for invention or utility model patents or for trade-marks made to the Austrian Patent Office as the first country of application may be used as the basis for claiming priority in the ROC under the relevant provisions of the Patent Law and the Trademark Law. However, the priority date claimed may not be earlier than 15 June 2000. The Austrian government also announced the reciprocal arrangement with Taiwan on 5 May 2000 under Government Gazette Notice No. 127.
Apart from Austria, the ROC has established reciprocity with Australia, Germany (for inven-tion and utility model patents only), Switzerland, France, Japan, the USA, Liechtenstein (invention and utility model patents only) and the UK. Under the current practice, when filing an ROC patent application within the priority period (12 months for invention and new utility model patents) by a national from any of the reciprocal countries, the applicant may claim priority for his ROC patent application based on a correspond-ing patent application that is filed in any one of the reciprocal countries provided that the ROC application is filed within the 12-month (inven-tion and utility model patents) or 6-month (new design patents) period.
The ROC has reciprocal trademark priority ar-rangements with the USA, Australia, France and the European Union Office for Harmonization in the International Market. Under the reciprocal arrangement with Austria, and according to the practice of the ROC trademarks authority, ap-plicants of any nationality applying for trade-mark protection in the ROC may claim priority based on a corresponding application first filed in Austria (or in any other country with which the ROC has a reciprocal trademarks arrangement), within 6 months from the date following the priority date.