Newsletter
PATENT PRIORITY CLAIMS BY UK APPLICANTS EFFECTIVE AS OF 24 MAY 2000
Our May 2000 issue reported in detail on the Agreement on Cooperation Concerning Mutual Recognition of Intellectual Property Rights on Behalf of the United Kingdom and the Republic of China (Taiwan), which was signed by the Taipei Representative Office in the United Kingdom and the British Trade and Cultural Of-fice in Taipei on 20 March 2000. After the agreement was signed, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) announced on 27 March 2000 that priority claims made by UK nationals for their ROC patent applications would be admissible starting from 20 March 2000.
The Taipei Representative Office in the UK re-cently learned that because of the time needed for the UK to complete the procedures for re-vising its published list of countries, its an-nouncement of the eligibility of ROC priority claims did not take effect until 24 May 2000. Therefore, on 2 October 2000, the IPO an-nounced that the starting date for admission of priority claims by UK applicants for their ROC patent applications has been moved back to 24 May 2000.
According to the new announcement made by the IPO, when claiming priority for ROC patent applications, UK nationals may not assert prior-ity dates earlier than 24 May 2000. However, before the change was announced, the IPO had already accepted some applications from UK nationals claiming priority dates before 24 May 2000 (but after 20 March 2000). How these claims will be treated is a matter worthy of ap-plicants' attention. Lee and Li will closely follow future developments and report them as appro-priate.