Filling the Invention Gap: Value-Added IP Services for Taiwan’s High-Tech Sector

Dr. Don Merino, Senior Vice President of Licensing, Intellectual Ventures

Best Practices for Building, Managing & Exploiting Your IP Portfolio: from Licensing to Valuation

(M) Dr. Don Merino, Senior Vice President of Licensing, Intellectual Ventures
Christopher Neumeyer, Director, Legal Department, Lite-On Technology Corporation
Alex Fan, Deputy General Director, Technology Transfer Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute
Brian Chang, Corporate Legal & IP Director, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Group

Company website: www.intven.com

Intellectual Ventures is the global leader in the business of invention. We collaborate with leading inventors, partner with pioneering companies, and invest both expertise and capital in the development and monetization of inventions and patent portfolios. Our mission is to energize and streamline an invention economy that will drive innovation around the world.

What We Do

• Create and sustain a market for invention through long-term and large-scale investment of time, talent, and capital.
• Develop valuable inventions on our own, partner with external inventors, and make investments in existing inventions .
• Supply inventions to innovative companies through a variety of licensing and partnering programs.
• Support the value of invention and inventor’s rights through advocacy and policy efforts.

Founded in 2000, Intellectual Ventures has grown to more than 700 dedicated team members worldwide, including our headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, and satellite offices in Austin, Bangalore, Beijing, Dublin, Seoul, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Vancouver. In 2008, IV launched an invention/prototype lab, where researchers work in a state-of-the-art facility.

To date, we have raised more than $5 billion to invest in our vision of an invention marketplace. Investors include a mix of Fortune 500 companies, university endowments, institutional investors, and individuals.

For more detailed information about Intellectual Ventures’ product and service offerings, please visit : http://www.intven.com/ProductsServices.as

Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.  We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. For more information, visit thomsonreuters.com.

Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Association (APIPA) was established on June 3,1994 through the joint endeavors of international technological and law professional. The goal of APIPA is

• To promote the effective management of intellectual property rights and R&D results.
• To assist enterprises in establishing management of intellectual property rights and commercialize their R&D results in Taiwan.
•  To set up the APIPA intellectual property database and provide intellectual property rights-related information services.

ATMT is a strategic alliance with AUTM, a non-profit organization with the objectives to construct the bridge platform for research institute, government, and industry, and also to provide the professional experience and specific information in IP management, technology transfer operation, and investment assessment.
Our Mission:

• Transfer AUTM experience in US as our role model.
• Improve the information exchange in IP and TT area between academic, government, and industry.
• Assist government to construct related regulations in IP management, TT mechanism, and IA analysis.
• Set up the corresponding window with foreign allied organization to communicate the experience and information.

Even though the Taiwan Patent Act has been effective since January 1, 1949, for a long time no relevant law had been made to qualify patent professionals in this jurisdiction, let alone to form a professional organization for patent attorneys. As such, patent professionals could only be regulated at the administrative level and were recognized as patent agents. Since no such professional association officially existed under Taiwanese law for the past few decades, the patent agents in this country could only communicate and interact with local and foreign organizations under the status of a social group, rather than acting as a professional association.

A draft of the Patent Attorneys Act was submitted to Legislative Yuan in 1988. After being ignored for about twenty years, it was finally passed under the great efforts of the former Director General of Taiwan Intellectual Property Office, Mr. Lien-sheng Tsai. The Patent Attorneys Act was finally promulgated on July 11, 2007 and effective as of January 11, 2008. In August 2008, the first Patent Bar Exam was held in accordance with the newly enacted Patent Attorneys Act, and the Taiwan Patent Attorneys Association (TWPAA) was thereby officially founded on December 11, 2009. 

After the TWPAA was established, all of its councillors and supervisors have been endeavoring to ensure its smooth operation in the shortest possible time. All committees also work together enthusiastically to develop various business ventures in order to immediately be of service to TWPAA members and the wider IP society in Taiwan. The work of TWPAA aims at promoting public interests, professional service, transparent process for decision-making and harmony among all fellow patent attorneys. Under our efforts, we hope that the patent attorneys can obtain advanced professional skills and a higher social position in Taiwan. We also hope to assist members in getting reasonable rewards and in developing new business opportunities both in Taiwan and around the world. Among many benefits, the TWPAA will improve the Taiwan patent attorneys ’ system and step into a new era alongside other international IP communities.

The professional team of our association which was lead by Chen Ming-Bang, the first director-general of the Intellectual Property Office, includes the professional experts who retired from TIPO(Taiwan Intellectual Property Office), lawyers, and the master’s and doctor’s degree level elites who have sufficient practical experience from all kinds of fields. Our association is contemporarily the most professional, non-profitable organization in Taiwan.

Our association is officially permitted by the Ministry of Interior on 5th of September, 2003, with the legal letter Tai-Nei-She-zi No.0920074425, and its aims is to actively provide Intellectual Property management platform, to promote the energy of research, and to facilitate the cooperation and communication among industry, official and academy, so as to integrate intellectual property and create the highest benefits of the application of the Intellectual Property.