The legislature yesterday approved amendments to the Trademark Act (商標法) prohibiting sales of counterfeit goods on TV shopping programs and on the Internet.
The move was aimed at unifying a longstanding dispute over whether sales of counterfeit items on the Internet or the electronic media constitutes copyright infringement, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said.
Following the changes, people who own, display, upload or print out items to put them on sale or with the intention to do so, under the circumstances that they are aware that the items are under the protection of trademarks and certificate marks, could be sentenced to one year in prison or fined a maximum of NT$50,000 (US$1,743).
Lawmakers removed an article in the act stipulating that trademark owners can demand a minimum compensation of not less than 500 times the price of the goods from violators, but maintained the ceiling of up to 1,500 times the price.
They decided to remove the article, saying it had resulted in a disproportionate fine in a recent case in which compensation for the sale of a counterfeit luxury handbag with a price tag of NT$500,000 reached NT$250 million.
The amendments also enlarged the scope of trademarks. Trademarked material may be composed of a word, design, symbol, color, sound, 3D shape or a combination thereof, as a result of which holographic images and login screen backgrounds used on mobile phones would also be recognized as trademarked content.
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