Taiwan has a chance to become an attractive place for innovators if the government can support intellectual property rights (IPR) holders, both local and foreign, and implement good long-term technology policies, a Taipei-based US attorney said yesterday at an IPR conference.
“Just like the Silicon Valley in the US, where it [IPR protection] has become a magnet to attract the best and brightest technology people from all over the world, I believe Taiwan can do the same thing,” John Eastwood, a US attorney and resident partner at Wenfei Attorneys-At-Law’s (瑞士文斐律師事務所) Taipei Office, told the Taipei Times during an interview yesterday.
Eastwood was invited to give a speech on trademark law and its relation to the nation’s economy at the annual IPR conference organized by LexisNexis in Taipei.
Eastwood said the establishment of an IPR police force was a big success for the government in protecting IPR and he also applauded the government’s continuous efforts to make Taiwan a better environment for people to do business.
Despite this, the government’s missteps would be the Philips case, which Eastwood said was a huge embarrassment for Taiwan as it made investors, technology companies and people from the legal profession view the nation as an unfair and difficult place to do business.
On March 13, the Taipei High Administrative Court nullified a Ministry of Economic Affairs’ decision on granting a compulsory license to Gigastorage Corp (國碩科技) for five patents related to recordable compact discs owned by Royal Philips Electronics NV. The ruling came after a European Commission report issued on Jan. 30 said that the ministry’s compulsory license ruling was inconsistent with WTO rules on IPR.
“[It appears as if] the government pursued a short-term gain instead of long-term technology policy … Protecting IP, technologies and innovators is what it is all about to have a long-term policy,” Eastwood said.
The IPR conference, held for the first time in Taiwan, attracted a total of 130 companies and around 200 participants to the two-day event.
The second afternoon of the conference saw insightful speeches from Lexis Nexis Asia Pacific, leading global law firm Howrey, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC, 台積電) and IBM Taiwan Corp.
Michel De Brujin from the Global IP Solutions team at Lexis Nexis covered global trends in the IPR market and helped the audience to translate them into solutions.
De Brujin shared his company’s research that 35 percent of patent applications are from Asian countries, specifically China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
The growth in the number of patent applications from Taiwan was between 1 percent and 2 percent, as opposed to a worldwide growth of 4.9 percent, he said. This indicated that Taiwanese patents were valued more for quality, rather than quantity, he said.
Glen Rhodes, a partner at Howrey, advised the audience on anti-trust basics and gave plenty of real world examples of the anti-trust lawsuits and their respective court sentences.
Richard Thurston, vice president and general counsel at TSMC, shared his concerns about local corporations’ lack of understanding and fighting spirit in the intellectual property war.
Thurston’s final conclusion was that the “Taiwan government must assist the private sector to establish a visionary intellectual property development implementation strategy and action plan.”
Pauline Liu (劉維玲), counsel in IPR law at IBM Taiwan emphasized what she called the “IT industry’s evolution to a new equilibrium between proprietary and open platform.”
Liu also enlightened the attendees on IBM’s four current IPR goals — patent leadership, IPR policy, reform and IPR income — and gave updates on IBM’s successes in each of the categories.
Overall, the conference proved to be a great networking event for IPR professionals. It also paved the way for building a forum for future IPR exchanges.
SMART MANUFACTURING: The company aims to have its production close to the market end, but attracting investment is still a challenge, the firm’s president said Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said its long-term global production plan would stay unchanged amid geopolitical and tariff policy uncertainties, citing its diversified global deployment. With operations in Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Europe and the US, Delta follows a “produce at the market end” strategy and bases its production on customer demand, with major site plans unchanged, Delta president Simon Chang (張訓海) said on the sidelines of a company event yesterday. Thailand would remain Delta’s second headquarters, as stated in its first-quarter earnings conference, with its plant there adopting a full smart manufacturing system, Chang said. Thailand is the firm’s second-largest overseas
‘REMARKABLE SHOWING’: The economy likely grew 5 percent in the first half of the year, although it would likely taper off significantly, TIER economist Gordon Sun said The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) yesterday raised Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 3.02 percent, citing robust export-driven expansion in the first half that is likely to give way to a notable slowdown later in the year as the front-loading of global shipments fades. The revised projection marks an upward adjustment of 0.11 percentage points from April’s estimate, driven by a surge in exports and corporate inventory buildup ahead of possible US tariff hikes, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy likely grew more than 5 percent in the first six months
SUPPLY RESILIENCE: The extra expense would be worth it, as the US firm is diversifying chip sourcing to avert disruptions similar to the one during the pandemic, the CEO said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) on Wednesday said that the chips her company gets from supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would cost more when they are produced in TSMC’s Arizona facilities. Compared with similar parts from factories in Taiwan, the US chips would be “more than 5 percent, but less than 20 percent” in terms of higher costs, she said at an artificial intelligence (AI) event in Washington. AMD expects its first chips from TSMC’s Arizona facilities by the end of the year, Su said. The extra expense is worth it, because the company is
The seizure of one of the largest known mercury shipments in history, moving from mines in Mexico to illegal Amazon gold mining zones, exposes the wide use of the toxic metal in the rainforest, according to authorities. Peru’s customs agency, SUNAT, found 4 tonnes of illegal mercury in Lima’s port district of Callao, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA). “This SUNAT intervention has prevented this chemical from having a serious impact on people’s health and the environment, as can be seen in several areas of the country devastated by the illegal use of mercury and illicit activities,”
RSS