ABSTRACT
This chapter first examines the different applications of the principle of exhaustion and the disparate treatment of parallel imports under Taiwan’s industrial IP laws in the order of the Integrated Circuit Layouts Act, the Trademark Act, the Patent Act and the Plant Varieties Act. It then focuses on the Copyright Act, which has draconian restrictions on parallel imports. This chapter continues to advocate why Taiwan should adopt a universal international exhaustion principle across all IP laws. It argues that Taiwan can achieve this goal by terminating the US–Taiwan Copyright Agreement. This chapter concludes with some lessons for other Asian economies. Most importantly, the principle of exhaustion of IPRs is an autonomous decision for each economy to make and national policies on exhaustion are clearly public policy–related and should not be contracted out (or opted out) by individual parties.
