經通國際智慧產權事務所

On November 7, 2007, following the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office’s (TIPO) decision of accepting the patent opposition against the utility model patent with the title of “Pressurization and Current Conduction Apparatus of Fan” filed on March 2, 1999, the Committee of Appeal of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’, the High Administrative Court’s and the Supreme Administrative Court’s rejections against the subsequent appeals, the Taipei High Administrative Court rejected the retrial request filed by the patentee of the said patent. In the said decision, the Court noted that according to Article 273-1(14) of Administrative Litigation Act, a retrial should be allowed if the examination of evidence decisive enough to influence the adjudication is omitted. And the Court noted that, however, by claiming that the appealed decisions were made based on inapplicable article, insufficient reason or conflicting reasons, the appellant incorrectly applied the said Article 273-1(14) of Administrative Litigation Act to file the said retrial request.

The said retrial was requested by the appellant based on the following reasons:

As set forth in Patent Act, the existence of inventive step should be based on the comparison of each and overall composing components; however, only brief and partial comparisons were conducted among the disputed patent and the proposed prior art 1~4.

The previous decision of the current case made by the Taipei High Administrative Court did not provide concrete reason of denying the inventive step of the sub claims 2~15 and 17~24 of the disputed patent.

The previous decision of the current case made by the Taipei High Administrative Court contained contradicting reasons.

Since all the said reasons were already previously rejected by the Taipei High Administrative Court and the Supreme Administrative Court, and the appellant’s request of retrial was incorrectly based on the said Article 273-1(14) of Administrative Litigation Act, the said request of retrial was rejected without oral arguments.

Organized and translated by Angela Shen

International Affairs