The establishment of an intellectual property (IP) bank is expected to benefit Taiwanese companies in the long term, but is unlikely to be of much help in litigations now in progress, a US-based patent expert said.
“From what I have seen, the plan for the IP bank is to help companies acquire portfolios that could protect them against potential litigation,” said Rod Willows, vice president of patent office relations at Thomson Reuters.
“That’s a good idea. The only challenge is that it will need a lot of financial backing,” he said at a recent media briefing in Taipei.
Willows said it would be interesting to see how the IP bank develops in Taiwan because it is different from the models in other countries, which are mainly funded by their governments.
Asked about how the IP bank might help Taiwanese companies in ongoing lawsuits, such as the patent war between HTC Corp (宏達電) and Apple Inc, Willows said the aim of the IP bank was to try to play a “defensive” role, which means it would have to identify and prevent litigations before they happen.
“Assuming it gets in front of the lawyers — that’s when you are talking billions potentially in terms of damages — there is no way that any government can fund and protect someone,” he said.
Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading provider of intelligent information to business and professional customers, generated revenue of US$13.1 billion (NT$379.6 billion) last year.
The institute has served more than 100 customers in Taiwan since 2005, including the state-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院).
On Thursday, ITRI’s fully owned Industrial Technology Investment Corp said it would invest NT$250 million on setting up a management company later this month, in a bid to further protect Taiwan’s intellectual property rights.
The goal of the intellectual property management company is to establish two types of funds — a counterclaim fund that will be used to combat intellectual infringements in the initial stages and a positioning fund that will focus on long-term strategy for potential sectors such as green power and smart televisions.
Willows said that NT$1 billion would be a “reasonable” scale for the positioning fund, while the counterclaim fund would require “a lot of billions” to support ongoing litigations.
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