Accelerated Examination Program (AEP) in Taiwan was started in 2009 for a pilot trial to expedite the examination of invention patent applications. Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) formally implemented the program in 2010 and 2014 to broaden the applicable scope of AEP filings. The AEP statistics of each year were published per month and quarterly by TIPO to encourage more AEP filings.
The following statistics are AEP filings with TIPO in 2017:
| 2017 AEP filings | Base 1 | Base 2 | Base 3 | Base 4 | Total （percentage） |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AEP cases filed by domestic applicants | 47 | 4 | 107 | 31 | 189 （-52%） |
| AEP cases filed by foreign applicants | 162 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 175 （-48%） |
| Subtotal （percentage） | 209 （57.41%） | 11 （-3.02%） | 110 （30.21%） | 34 （-9.34%） | 364＊ （-100%） |
| Average time for issuing first examination opinion（mths） | 71.1 days （2.37） | 79.4 days （2.65） | 129.7 days （4.32） | 97.2 days （3.24） |
Remarks:
- Base 1 – for invention that has a corresponding foreign patent application allowed after a foreign patent office has conducted substantive examination
- Base 2 – for invention that has a corresponding foreign application pending before USPTO, JPO or EPO, but official action and search report have been issued
- Base 3 – for invention required for commercial practice (starting from 2010)
- Base 4 – for invention related to green technologies (starting from 2014)
Per the standard processing time of invention patent applications, the time period for TIPO to issue the first examination opinion will be from 15 to 32 months, depending on their technical fields. TIPO has scheduled said time period as 6 months for AEP cases filed by Base 1 and 2, and 9 months for AEP cases filed by Base 3 and 4. However, according to the above 2017 data, the actual processing times for TIPO to issue examination results on AEP cases from Base 1 to 4 were shorter than the time period as scheduled. As such, if an invention patent application has met the AEP requirements, the applicant could take advantage of this accelerated examination program to obtain patent protection more quickly in Taiwan.
