Friday, September 4, 2026, is certainly a day worth celebrating for Taiwan’s patent community: the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) announced that, after more than 2.5 years of preparation and testing, the Priority Document Exchange (PDX) Program between TIPO and the USPTO officially commenced on that day.
Starting September 4, for a Taiwan patent application claiming priority to a U.S. application, the applicant only needs to submit the access code issued by the USPTO for the priority application within 16 months from the earliest claimed priority date (or 10 months for a design application), and then the requirement to submit a certified copy of the priority document will be deemed to have been fulfilled.
TIPO will use the access code, together with the application number and filing date of the priority application, to directly retrieve an electronic copy of the priority document from the USPTO.
Previously, applicants were required to submit a certified copy of the priority document issued by the USPTO. Although a paper copy was not necessarily required, the submission of priority documents has often been viewed by foreign applicants as an additional procedural burden.
Even better, TIPO announced that:
- This TIPO–USPTO PDX Program applies to all three types of Taiwan patent applications: inventions, utility models, and designs.
- It also applies to Taiwan applications filed before September 4, 2026.
- More, TIPO allows applicants to rectify errors in the access code or priority-application information. When such errors prevent TIPO from retrieving the correct electronic copy of the priority document, TIPO “shall notify the applicant to correct the information or submit a paper copy of the certified priority document within two months.”
The USPTO is the third intellectual property office to enter into a PDX arrangement with TIPO, following the JPO and KIPO.
Like the previous PDX Programs, the new program is also reciprocal. Accordingly, applicants filing U.S. patent applications claiming priority to a Taiwan application will only need to provide the access code issued by TIPO to fulfill the requirement to submit the priority document. For TIPO to issue the access code, there is no official fee.