RESOURCES

Intellectual Property (Amendment) Bill 2021

The Intellectual Property (Amendment) Bill 2021 was passed on 12 January 2022 by the Parliament of Singapore to provide a more efficient and business-friendly IP registration. This makes it easier for businesses to protect and manage their Intangible Assets (IA) and Intellectual Property (IP).

The IP (Amendment) Bill 2021 introduces changes to Singapore’s Patents Act, the Trade Marks Act, the Registered Designs Act, the Plant Varieties Protection Act and the Geographical Indications Act 2014.

The Bill will result in improvements across three broad categories:

1. Business-friendliness

2. Operational efficiency

3. Legislative and procedural clarity

• Removing the requirement to pay a fee for publication of translation for non-English patent application.
  
  
• Allowing partial acceptance of national trade mark applications to help applicants save time and costs.
  
  
• Changing of post-deadline relief measure for trade mark applications to two months from six.
  
  
• Introducing an opposition mechanism for correction  of errors in IP applications or registrations, where the correction may affect the interest of third parties. 
  
  
  
  

• Shifting technical and operational provisions from primary to subsidiary legislation to allow IPOS to respond more nimbly to changing business needs.
  
  
• Reducing the turnaround and processing time for patent applications by inviting applicants to make minor amendments within a shorter time period.
  
  
• Streamlining the patent examination review process so that patent examiners only need to focus on the latest proposed amendments under some circumstances.
  
  
• New cooperative mode of examination for applications for the protection of new plant varieties. 

• Clarifying IPOS’ ability to avail patent documents for public access.
  
  
• Empowering the Registrar to issue practice directions on the manner of filing of patent applications, and also amending the rules under the Patents Act to require sequence listings to be filed with the patent applications.
  
  
• Clarifying that an expired trade mark will continue to be regarded as an “earlier trade mark” for as long as it is eligible for renewal or restoration.