Taiwan and China are scheduled to sign an intellectual property rights agreement today (Tuesday) , according to the Intellectual Property Office under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The IPR agreement will focus mostly on the right of priority and plant breeders' rights, the IPO said. According to IPO Director-General Wang Mei-hua, up until now the mainland has not granted Taiwan the right of priority, which gives patent and trademark holders in one nation the right to make a prior claim on the same patents or trademarks in other nations. After the IPR agreements are signed, the mainland will grant Taiwan the same priority right that it currently extends to many other nations. This means that after local firms submit their patent applications in Taiwan, they will have one year to file an application for the same patent with mainland authorities. Many Taiwan firms are expected to benefit from this new agreement, Wang said, because every year Taiwan-based firms file an average of some 22,000 patent applications in the mainland. The vast majority of these applications are submitted by technology companies, she added. As to plant breeders' rights, at the moment the mainland only recognizes this right for certain varieties of plants, the majority of which are food crops. When the agreement takes effect, the mainland will offer legal protection not only to food crops from Taiwan, but to Taiwan horticulture crops and fruits as well. The IPO said that after the agreement is concluded, Taiwan's Council of Agriculture will submit a list of locally-bred agriculture crops to Beijing for consideration of the granting of plant variety rights in the mainland. Specific types of guavas and pineapples will most likely be included in the list, sources said. The signing of the IPR protection agreement will take place on the same day as the inking of the economic cooperation framework agreement, a far-reaching trade pact between Taiwan and the mainland. The ECFA and the IPR protection agreement will both be signed in China's city of Chongqing. Recently, a landmark trade deal between Taiwan and China will cut tariffs on more than 800 products and open up service industries, officials and sources said on Thursday, giving a major boost to around $100 billion in annual two
