Grace Period under Taiwan's Patent Act is Extended to 12 months

In order to create a better environment for the dissemination of innovation and technologies ideas, an amendment to the Patent Act has been passed by the country's legislature to reflect a more lenient requirement of novelty for filing an invention application in Taiwan.  The revisions include extending the grace period to 12 months from 6 months and the new grace period would tolerate more types of public disclosure that were not allowed previously under the Patent Act -- a case can be made even when the disclosure is made by the applicant voluntarily.  Furthermore, the requirement to claim the grace period at the time of filing an application with specific facts and their corresponding dates is also dispensed with under the new law.  Similar revisions have been made to the applications for utility model patents under the Patent Act.