Taiwan Practice on Execution of Document by Patent Applicant

Generally a natural person or juristic person (business entity, etc.) is entitled to file a patent applicant in Taiwan. It is required by Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) that the applicant should state his name, address and nationality in the application form with signature or seal when filing a patent application. For juristic entity of an applicant, such as a company, governmental agency, school or juridical foundation, etc., it is also required to state in the application form the name of the person who represent said applicant (e.g. the representative of a domestic company should be a person who has been recorded in the Ministry of Economic Affairs). With regard to the application form with signature or seal or execution of document by the applicant, please note the following practice adopted in Taiwan.

1. An applicant shall sign his name or affix a seal in the application form or document when filing a patent application or any other patent related matter. However the applicant can appoint a patent agent for handling the same by executing and submitting a power of attorney bearing the signature and/or seal of said applicant.
   
2. For a natural person applicant, he/she can execute the application form or document by signing his/her name or affixing a seal (which must bear his/her name on it).
   
3. For a juristic applicant, the document should be executed by signature or seal from the representative as mentioned above; if it is a foreign applicant, the representative can simply sign the document; yet if it is a domestic applicant, a seal showing the name of the juristic entity should also be affixed onto said executed document in addition to the signature or seal from the representative. Further, said entity seal could have not only its name but also those wordings for the purpose of patent filings or intellectual property matter, yet it should not bear irrelevant wordings such as for import/export of trade, etc.
4. If the applicant is a governmental agency, besides affixing the seal of said agency, the director or head of said agency should also execute the document by either signing his/her name or affixing his/her seal thereon; this is also applicable to those applicant of a school or juridical foundation, etc.; if said agency is a foreign applicant, the document can be simply signed by the representative.
5. If the applicant is a company and its representative is another company, then it should clearly specify the same in the application by affixing the company’s seal of said representative.
6. For electronic filing applications, the applicant should use electronic certificate as his/her digital signature; if there are two or more applicants, all the applicants should use digital signature certificates; however if the applicant has appointed a patent agent to handle the application, it is only necessary to have the patent agent (or one of the patent agents) submit the digital signature certificate.
7. For recordal of assignment, request for earlier laid-open (of an invention application), withdrawal or abandonment of application, review of file wrapper, etc., the signature and/or seal of the applicant in the documents as filed should be consistent to the ones as recorded on file. If they are not consistent, TIPO will issue an official letter notifying the applicant to reply within a prescribed term. In such case, the applicant may reply by one of the following alternatives: 1) re-executing the documents with the same signature and/or seal; 2) recording the change of signature and/or seal (by submitting an affidavit); 3) declaring the genuine or authorization of said signature and/or seal (if so, the documents bearing the signature and/or seal in the future should still follow those on record)

In addition, if the documents of a corporate applicant are executed by an authorized person, rather than the representative as mentioned above, it should be attested by stating that said person has performed the execution on duty and represented the corporate applicant to sign the documents, or any related evidencing document could be submitted. The authorized signing person means, for example, a manager who has the rights to handle and sign documents on behalf of the corporate applicant according to the company statutes or rules or per the authorized scope of an existing contract. Said attestation proving the person who is authorized to sign the documents could be issued by the signing person himself, the representative of applicant or the patent agent of applicant.