Pursuant to Taiwan Patent Act, a patent application shall be published only after the issue fee and first annuity fee have been paid by the applicant within 3 months after said patent application is allowed, otherwise no publication shall be made. However if the applicant needs to defer the publication of patent application, a request of deferment could be filed at the same time when attending to the payment of said issue fee and annuity fee.
The above mentioned deferment period of patent publication should not be more than 3 months, which was expressly stipulated by Article 86 of the prevailing Enforcement Rules of Taiwan Patent Act. In this regard, Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) previously conducted a study on introducing the deferment of publication for design application based on Hague system but after the responses from the various public and private sectors, and then after taking into account the current average examination period of 25 months for an invention patent application, and also the formality examination period of about 4 months for a utility model application, TIPO finally decided to prolong the maximum deferment period for patent publication from 3 months to 6 months. The newly revised Rule 86 of Enforcement Rules of Taiwan Patent Act will come into force on March 9, 2016.
Accordingly the patent applicant will have ample time to make a better plan on his patent strategy and files patent applications in foreign countries to meet the demand of his patented products whenever necessary.
