Saturday is usually a non-working day for government agencies in Taiwan. Exceptions occur when the government adjusts working days in observance of national holidays.
For example, Saturday February 6, 2010 was made a working day in order to accommodate the 2010 Lunar New Year holidays, which ran from Saturday February 13 to Sunday February 21.
The applicant in question, a US company, sent its instruction to file an invention application on Sunday February 7, claiming priority to February 6, 2009, because it believed that Monday February 8, 2010 was the due date according to the conventional practice. The application was filed with priority claims on Monday February 8, 2010; however, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) declined to acknowledge one of the priority claims because its deadline of February 6, 2010 had lapsed.
TIPO’s decision was appealed to the Board of Appeal, with a request to reinstate the priority date on the basis that “the delay [was] caused by other causes not attributable to applicant”, under Article 17 (2) of the Patent Act.
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TIPO, invention application, deadline
