Selling fake products online criminalized in amendment

By criminalizing the listing of counterfeit merchandise online, the Trademark Act amendment closes a legal loophole where people were allowed to post fake merchandise online. Under the new amendment, posting fake merchandise online will be punishable by fines of up to NT$50,000 and up to one year in prison

　　The amendment also expands the types of representations protected by trademark laws by including holograms, 3D shapes and movements.

The bill adds animations (movements), laser logos (holograms) and three-dimensional shapes to the current legal recognition of trademarks as “a word, figure, symbol, color, sound, three-dimensional shape or a combination thereof,” said Wang Mei-hua, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office.

The amendment will recognize some of the globally registered trademarks such as the startup animations on cell phones.

The Executive Yuan decided not to specify scent as a viable definition of a trademark in the proposed amendment as most countries in the world have yet to stipulate standards for scents as a logo. However, if businesses apply to have scents trademarked in the future, the Intellectual Property Office will handle applications by studying related executive orders.

In addition, the amendment also removes the previous minimum limit for trademark infringement fines of 500 times the unit retail price of the infringed goods and leaves the decision for the amount of the fine in the hands of judges. The previous limit was in place to prevent excessively harsh punishments such as multimillion fines for hawkers selling counterfeit handbags

The bill also includes new measures regarding certificates of origin as trademarks. Applicants for the certificates will have to use the location of origin or the logo identifying the location in their application in accordance with the Trademark Act. In Taiwan, certificates of origin are commonly used to distinguish agricultural products.

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