BY SYLVIA Y. S. HONG

The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) signed an MOU on the deposit of biological materials, which entered into force immediately, with the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) on December 1, 2017.

With regard to the deposit of biological materials, according to the Patent Act, when filing a patent application for invention involving a biological material or utilization of a biological material, the applicant shall make a deposit of the biological material with a domestic depository designated by the TIPO, i.e. the Food Industry Research and Development Institute (FIRDI).
 

Since Taiwan is not a contracting state of the Budapest Treaty, mutual recognition is not applicable. Even though the biological material has been deposited in a foreign depository, the applicant still has to make a deposit in a domestic depository.
 

However, through the cooperation between TIPO and UKIPO, the deposit of biological material made for the purposes of patent procedure at a designated depository is mutually recognized by both sides. Therefore, there is no need to make duplicate deposits of biological materials in Taiwan and the U.K. Moreover, deposits made prior to the implementation of the mutual cooperation also qualify as long as the relevant patent application for invention is filed after such implementation.
 

Following the Japan Patent Office, UKIPO became the second office that mutually recognizes the effect of deposit with TIPO.

1「臺英專利程序上生物材料寄存相互合作」正式實施, Taiwan Intellectual Property Office News (December 4, 2017), retrieved from. 
2  Patent Attorney