The Council of Agriculture is seeking talks with Chinese authorities on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in agriculture, an official with the council's Food and Agriculture Administration said yesterday.
Noting that rampant smuggling of locally developed plant varieties and crop breeding know-how to China has caused severe damage to Taiwan's agricultural development and profitability, the official said the council urgently needs to negotiate with China for institutionalized IPR protection with regard to agriculture.
To protect the legitimate rights of local investors in crop breeding research and product development, the official said, the council has negotiated with the world's major seed trading countries on mutual acceptance of utility patent applications by their citizens for inventions in breeding technology and cultivars.
"So far, the United States, the European Union, Australia and Japan have expressed a willingness to accept Taiwanese citizens' applications for plant variety patent protection," the official said, adding that similar negotiations with the Netherlands, Israel and Canada were ongoing.
As China's counterfeiting and other IPR infringements have been a source of suffering for Taiwan's farmers, the official said, the council is keen to hold similar talks with China on mutual agricultural IPR protection.
"We need to negotiate with China under the same format to secure institutionalized IPR protection for our crop breeding researchers and product developers," the official said, adding that strong IPR protection would encourage investment.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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