Since its inception in 2008, the Intellectual Property Court (“IP Court”) has heard thousands of civil, criminal and administrative actions concerning Intellectual Property Rights (“IPR”). In part one of this report, we examine statistical data from multiple sources*, shedding light on the operations of the IP Court over the past twelve years.

The IP Court

The IP Court was established on 1 July 2008 as Taiwan’s first specialized court with the aim of improving IP law enforcement, the protection of IP rights, and promoting national economic development.

The IP Court exclusively hears IPR cases, mostly relating to the Copyright, Patent, Trademark and Trade Secret Acts. In terms of jurisdiction, the IP Court is the court of first and second instance for civil actions, the court of second instance for criminal actions (i.e. appeals against District Court decisions in the first instance), and the court of first instance for administrative actions.

Number of judges and amount of cases

There are currently 14 judges at the IP Court, including 8 male and 6 female judges. The number of judges has almost doubled from the original 8 presiding at the establishment of the IP Court. The proportion of female judges has gradually increased over the years, with female judges outnumbering male judges from 2014-2016.

Number of judges from 2008 to 2019

Source: Judicial Yuan

Numbers of cases closed by each judge per month

As of March 2020, a total of 16,208 cases, litigation and non-litigation, have been lodged with the IP Court. Of these, the IP Court has closed 15,717 cases. Since 2009, when the IP Court was in full swing, an average of about 2,000 cases have been lodged every year. The peak number was 2,380 cases in 2010. The number of cases gradually decreased from 2010 to 2017, but has again increased in the past two years. Please note that the number of cases lodged in particular year include cases previously lodged but not closed as well as newly lodged cases.

The IP Court closes approximately 70% of cases lodged per year.

We now turn to the average number of cases handled by each IP Court judge per month. In 2009 and 2010, due to the large number of cases and comparatively lower number of judges, the burden on each judge was as heavy as 17 to 20 cases to be closed per month. But after 2011, with the general decrease in the number of cases and increase in the number of judges, the average number of cases per judge went down to 7 to 8 cases per month. There has been an upward trend in the number of cases per judge in the past two years.

Number of cases and average number of cases closed by each judge per month from 2008 to 2019

Source: Judicial Yuan

Proportion of civil, criminal and administrative cases handled

The IP Court hears civil and administrative IPR cases, as well as appeals in criminal IPR cases. Statistics on closed cases show that by proportion, most cases heard by the IP Court are civil suits. From 2008 to 2019, the proportion of civil cases has gradually risen from 41% to 63%. The remaining cases are split equally between criminal appeal cases and administrative cases, with about 20% each in recent years.

Proportion of civil, criminal and administrative cases closed from 2008 to 2019

Source: Judicial Yuan

Average number of days to close a case

The average number of days for a case before the IP Court from lodging to closing gradually increased from 114.87 days in 2009 to 209.14 in 2015, the highest on record. From 2016 to 2018 the average time to a decision was about 200 days, but this dropped to 182.45 days in 2019.

Average number of days to close a case from 2008 to 2019

Source: Judicial Yuan

Comparing the time required to disposition of civil, criminal and administrative cases before the IP Court, it is clear that civil cases are the most time consuming. Since the establishment of the IP Court, the number of days to disposition for a civil case has continuously gone up, peaking in 2015 at 267.68 days. From 2016 to 2019, the IP Court has steadily reduced the length of time it takes for a case to be closed. In 2019, the number of days to disposition of a civil case fell below 200 days.

As for criminal cases, the number of days to disposition has slowly increased from 88.96 days in 2009 to 142.43 days in 2019. The trend for administrative cases is similar, from 130.27 days in 2009 to 190.87 days in 2019.

Overall, criminal cases take the fewest days to a decision, while civil cases take the most. But in the last two years, the number of days to disposition for administrative cases has exceeded or equaled that for civil cases.

Average number of days to close a case from 2008 to 2019

Source: Judicial Yuan

The above statistics provide some interesting insights into the general operations of Taiwan IP Court. We will have a closer look at IP litigation statistics in part two of this report.

For more information on IP matters in Taiwan, please contact Gary Kuo at gkuo@winkerpartners.com.

*Sources: (1) Judicial Yuan (2) IP Court (3) DATA.GOV.TW.

*Note: Some of the figures provided in this report are calculated using raw data  and may differ from those figures officially reported.