Taiwan and France signed a memorandum of understanding and letter of intent May 21 in Taipei City, underscoring the two sides’ commitment to deepening industrial collaboration.
Hao Pei-chih, head of the Taipei Representative Office in France, and Franck Paris, representative of the French Office in Taipei, signed an MOU on facilitating cooperation on industrial R&D and innovation. Through the joint support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Administration and Department of Industrial Technology, the two sides will hold reciprocal visits and exchange events to reinforce partnership, the IDA said.
Additionally, the same day saw the inking of an LOI on establishing a bilateral patent prosecution highway by Liao Cheng-wei, director general of the MOEA’s Intellectual Property Office, and Pascal Faure, Liao’s counterpart from France’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), witnessed by Hao and Paris. The PPH system will expedite patent reviews via information sharing between relevant agencies.
The system is set to take effect July 1 this year, marking a milestone in Taiwan-France intellectual property cooperation, the IPO said. With the conclusion of the agreement, France has become Taiwan’s seventh patent prosecution partner, following the US, Japan, Spain, South Korea, Poland and Canada, the office added.
In 2024 France was Taiwan’s 18th largest trade partner overall and its third largest in the European Union, with the bilateral trade volume reaching US$ 6.5 billion, Liao said. The IPO will continue to deepen exchanges with INPI to optimize the intellectual property climate for both countries and boost mutual industrial development, he concluded. (POC-E)
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