"The failure to enhance civil discovery procedures and increase civil damages significantly reduces the already poor protection for IP owners," an ECCT white paper on the subject said.
"If we look at it very closely, we notice that the only thing that was decriminalized was infringement against the new invention rather than the patent of the new design," Lin said.
"We don't know the reason behind it ...we can only guess that it is because the patent holders of new inventions are mainly from overseas," he added.
Hardly a good start for a year during which the government vowed to get tough on IPR.
According to Laurent Gaborit, of Cartier Taiwan Ltd, the level of punishment is simply not an effective deterrent.
"In terms of counterfeiting in general, it seems the problem with the legislation is that the punishments are not severe enough," Gaborit said. "We need to have some stronger political willingness in Taiwan to help us with this problem," he added.
Another area of IPR protection which will require serious government action -- if not an act of God -- is the establishment of legal channels across the Strait through which to pursue violators that are based in Taiwan but operate out of China where they are virtually immune from prosecution.
"Cross-border issues affect nearly all industries," Eastwood said. "It would help enforcement to start working towards setting standards for accepting documents coming in from the mainland to pursue criminal and civil actions against infringers running businesses out of Taiwan that operate in the PRC and elsewhere," he said.
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