National Development Plan in 2014(hereafter: the Plan) was approved by Executive Yuan on Jan. 6th, 2014, which outlined national macroeconomic goals, policy directions and main measures of 2014. The Plan is the second-term implementation plan for National Development Plan (2013-2016) and is officially launched in January 2014, leveraging diversification, innovation, and globalization as main strategies to promote domestic investment and expand export. Meanwhile, the Plan includes actively negotiations with important trading partners to sign the economic and trading agreement, improvement of the economic recovery strength and speed, continuingly deepening all kinds of reforms along with eight main policy directions and further develop social and environmental establishments.

According to the Plan, the main policy directions and targeted measures are as followed:
1.Vigorous Economy- Seeking opportunities for signing ECA/FTA, accelerating implementation of the Free Economic Demonstration Zone, encouraging innovation, start-ups, and enhancing human capital investment.
2.Social Justice and Harmony- Against contaminated food and counterfeit drugs, continue promoting new social assistance system and improving income distribution.
3.Clean Government - Establish “anti- corruption, remove corruption, and re-anti corruption" mechanism. To implement human rights safeguards and judicial protection, accelerate the organizational reforms of government, deepening the government efficacy.
4.Excel Education- To implement 12-year compulsory education, promote higher education export and strengthens the development of cultural and creative industries, and pass down innovative core arts as well.
5.Sustainable Environment- Strive for developing renewable energy, speed-up the low-carbonization of industries, strengthens ecological conservation, and improves disaster prevention.
6.Comprehensive infrastructure- To stabilize water and electricity supply, improve transport efficiency and quality, facilitate the balance of regional development, improve governmental finance, and develop cross-strait financial business in a steady way.
7.Cross-strait Peace- To push negotiations on follow-up issues of ECFA step by step, raise a sound mechanism for cross-strait communication, and enhance national defense and national security.
8.International Amicability- To actively engage in humanitarian aid, expand overseas cultural stronghold, tourism and to develop characteristic tourism.

A policy direction needs to be highlighted is the “Vigorous Economy”. According to the Plan, the R.O.C. government will set its policy tone in the innovation of technology this year, promoting all sorts of fundamental industrial technique development programs to foster industry-academic personnel, and enhance the application of R&D results in industry value chain in the field of information and communication, machinery manufacturing, biotechnology and medicine. In addition, the government will construct a friendly environment that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship through sound regulatory and financial mechanism and other resources such as field experiments. Also, with the enhancement on deployment and application of intellectual property of key technologies of industry, agriculture and cultural industries, all positive effects will be synchronized through the industrialization of technology.

Taiwan (R.O.C.) Legislation Yuang has announced new Copyright Act, including the amendment of Article 53, 65, 80-2, 87, and 87-1 on January 7th . The new Copyright Act focused on two aspects: the physically challenged people’s right to information accessibility, and the limits of fair use.

First of all, the Copyright Act provides more accessible means for those “beneficiary persons,” including the visually impaired, learning disabled, hearing impaired or others having a handicap in perceiving expressions of works.

As to legal reproduction and who can exploit those works, pursuant to Article 53 of Copyright Act which is for the exclusive use of “beneficiary persons,” works that have been publicly released may be reproduced by means of translation, Braille, sound recording, ADC (Analog-to-digital converter), verbal imagery, accompanying sign language translation or otherwise by central or local government agencies, non-profit institute or organizations, and all levels of schools or educational institutions established by law.

Besides, according to Section 2, Article 53 of the Copyright Act, a beneficiary person, or someone acting on his or her behalf including a primary caretaker or caregiver, may make an accessible format copy of a work for a non-profit use of the beneficiary person or otherwise may assist the beneficiary person to make and use accessible format copies where the beneficiary person has lawful access to that work or a copy of that work for the visually impaired, learning disabled, hearing impaired or others having a handicap in perceiving expressions of works.

Furthermore, pursuant to Article 87-1 of Copyright Act, import of any copies reproduced by means of translation, Braille, sound recording, ADC, verbal imagery, accompanying sign language translation or otherwise by central or local government agencies, non-profit institute or organizations, and all levels of schools or educational institutions established by law based on Article 53, should be allowed. Therefore, via the cross-border exchange, the accessible format will be shared with lower price, and thus introduce advanced techniques to improve accessibility to information.

Second, concerning fair use, pursuant to Article 80-2 of Copyright Act, reproduction authorized by Article 44 to 63, and by Article 65 will not be deemed as a circumvention of technology protection measures employed by copyright owners to prohibit or restrict others from accessing works. The amendment will facilitate the exchange of accessible formats and overwhelm the accessibility to public released works.

Last but not least, even entitled to exploit copyright protected works within the scope of Subsection 4 (limitations on economic rights) of Copyright Act, people need to pass four test elements of Section 2, Article 65 as well to exam whether the exploitation is a fair use or an infringement.

Intellectual Property Office (IPO) indicated that in order to prepare for the dawn of Quad-play, IPO has finetuned the legislative framework of the entire Copyright Act to comply with the development of high-tech by holding public hearings and expert panels. IPO hopes the new Copyright Act will meet the expectation of the society, and expect more feedbacks from various walks of life.

In order to promote the development of computer technology industry in Taiwan, in October 1998 the Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Economic Affairs R.O.C. (TIPO) has issued the Patent Examination Standards for Computer Software and revised in May 2008. However, with the rapid development of computer software technologies, TIPO began to consider amendments to the standards. After few years, as international standards had been changed because of the rapid advancement of computer technologies, TIPO finally issued the latest 2014 version of the examination standards for computer software-related patent review in order to clarify and make the review standards identically.

According to the patent law in Taiwan, an "invention" refers to any creation of technical concepts but not include a series of logic algorithms. Similar to mathematics, in the past computer software was not a patentable invention because it was deemed to be logic algorithms. To deal with this technical essence, the old standards indicate that the claims drafted for computer software-related inventions should sufficiently disclose how to perform the algorithms with the technical means to achieve specific functions. So in general, the amendments deal with the major issues of whether computer software-related inventions are patentability under the patent law in Taiwan and expand the protection for computer software-related inventions. There are totally five points in the amendments. First, the amendments not only attempt to make a clear patentability definition for computer software-related inventions but also provide further criterion. Second, the amendments stipulate “business method is not a kind of invention”. Third, In the progress of reviewing inventive step, the amendments add new distinction rules such as "the computer software-related invention reveals only information" and "make use of computers simply" to eliminate the application without the technical contribution. Fourth, the amendments expand the protection of computer software-related inventions. And last, the new standards append new rules for claim. "Means plus function" claim language is often applied in claims for computer software, as most of the technical features come from the function outcome based on the algorithm, rather than from the tangible device in which the software is stored. New amendments differ for the claims by “means plus function” or “step plus function” and regulated the disclosure obligations of patent statement to comply with the requirements and requests in order to achieve clarity paragraph.

Abstract:

Ranking by the World Economic Forum (WEF) published the Global Competitiveness Report, 2013-2014, the Hong Kong (HK) SAR is 7 and Taiwan is 12. However, the gross domestic product per person to compare the average income of Hong Kong and Taiwan fall nearly USD $ 16,000. The report also shows that, Hong Kong owns better prepare the infrastructure and technology degree, among the best in global competitiveness. We know that governments can only actively enhance technological innovation and research and development, and to continue to strengthen human resources, improve the financial and environmental advantages, in order to maintain the country's competitiveness.

How do the Taiwan authorities take existing competitive advantages to short and finally, and synergy? This article will describe the Hong Kong SAR’s R & D system, the competent authority, and major resources. By this study can help the audience to understand the practice of Hong Kong system, and looking for the better way to improve Taiwan’s international competitiveness.

Keywords: R&D, Competition, Innovation and Technology Commission, Innovation and Technology Fund

<Source: Hung-Chih Chen, A descriptive Study of HKSAR’s R&D System Based on Innovation And Technology Fund, Science and Technology Law Review Vol. 26 No.3, February 2014, p.p. 31-52>

Abstract:

The civilization of human society closely correlates with the record and the transferring mode of information. Over the last few years, sizable data leak and hacking incidents involving personal information have occurred in Korea, raising great social concern. Korea passed the long-discussed Personal Information Protection Act in 2011. Taiwan established the Computer-Processed Personal Information Protection Act in 1995 and the Act was amended in 2010. This article will analysis the Korea’s newest Personal Information Protection Act and discuss the difference between the Korea and Taiwan’s legislation. Finally, the author will also provide some of personal points of view toward the future development of privacy legislation in Taiwan.

Keywords: Korea, Personal Information Protection Act, Supervisory Authority, Privacy Impact Assessment, Personal Information Dispute Mediation.

<Source: Jung-Chin Kuo, Legal Study on Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act of 2011, Science and Technology Law Review Vol. 26 No.2, February 2014, p.p. 30-53>