The Taiwan IP Office (TIPO) announced on July 22, 2022 that it will revise the Patent Examination Guidelines to expressly approve some long-standing practices on formality requirements. The draft amendment has been posted on TIPO’s website for a two-week public review, after which the amendment would be implemented in mid-August if no significant change occurs.
In the draft amendment, TIPO expressly indicates that Powers of Attorney and other documents submitted by applicants in the filing and prosecution stage can be signed electronically. While scanned copies of POAs have long been acceptable in patent applications, the new amendment will bring even more convenience to applicants.
However, there is an important caveat: an electronic signature must be identifiable as a personal signature; examiners having doubts on this will request the applicant to re-submit the document with a wet signature or prove he or she did electronically sign the document personally.
For the ease of understanding, the draft amendment gives two examples as below for comparison; the first one satisfies the formality requirement while the second one does not.
[The First Example: acceptable]
[The Second Example: not acceptable; examiners will request the applicant to re-submit the document with a wet signature or prove he or she did electronically sign the document personally.]
Readers having experiences in patent or trademark filings in Taiwan especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic would know that the above test for e-signed POAs has been adopted by patent and trademark examiners for quite some time. We believe the Trademark Examination Guidelines will expressly embrace this test soon.