The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) announced on January 28, 2008 that the following new measures became effective as from January 1, 2008:
- For granted invention patent and design applications, the prior arts cited by the Examiners during the examination stage and shown in the search report will be disclosed publicly in the official Patent Gazette when these applications are published.
- For pending invention patent and design applications, the applicants will not be provided with hard copies of the prior art listed in the search report anymore unless the applicants are natural persons who are not represented by a Taiwan patent attorney. However, if prior arts are patent documents which are difficult to be retrieved, or prior arts of non-patent documents, hard copies will still be provided to the applicants by TIPO.
