Taiwan's pending design patent reform: standalone GUI designs, similar designs in one application and a 12-month grace period

If your company designs app icons, dashboards or other screen interfaces for the Taiwan market, the design reform you may have read about is not law yet. On October 22, 2026 the Executive Yuan (Taiwan’s Cabinet) approved the bill, but the Legislative Yuan has yet to pass it, and design applications filed today are examined under the Patent Act as last amended on May 4, 2022, including its six-month grace period.

1. The short answer

The bill would make five changes:

• computer-generated icons and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) would be deemed “articles”, so they could be protected without being tied to a physical product;
• the same applicant could file two or more similar designs in one application, with one designated as the original design;
• the grace period for designs would go from six to twelve months;
• a design application could also be divided within three months after an allowance decision is served;
• a change of owner’s name with TIPO would be available for any dispute over ownership once it is resolved, not only for employer–employee disputes.

None of this applies to filings today. My advice is to plan every filing on the current rules and to read the bill as a reminder to record what you disclosed and when, not as extra time.

2. Where the bill stands

The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) pre-announced a first draft on September 11, 2024 and held a public hearing on November 4, 2024. It announced a second draft on March 21, 2025, amending 17 articles (two new, fifteen amended), asked for comments by April 7, 2025 and held a second hearing on April 17, 2025. On May 19, 2025 it published its responses to the comments.

TIPO reports that it submitted the draft to the Executive Yuan on June 24, 2025. Its summary of activities for August to December 2025 says the draft passed review at an Executive Yuan meeting of ministers without portfolio on August 13, 2025 and at an Executive Yuan policy meeting on December 22, 2025. On October 22, 2026, the Executive Yuan Council approved the draft at its 4026th meeting, and TIPO posted the approved text the same day.

In the Legislative Yuan, I searched the bill system for the current (11th) term again on November 9, 2026. The Executive Yuan’s bill has now arrived: Government Bill No. 11024659, printed on October 30, 2026 and placed on the agenda of the 5th sitting of the 6th session (the bill page shows the dates October 30 and November 3, 2026); the page does not yet show which committee it has been referred to. The legislators’ bill, No. 11020460, proposed by 17 legislators and printed on April 8, 2026, remains with the Economics Committee. Neither bill page shows any committee review. The transitional article, in both versions, leaves the amendment date blank, so no effective date exists yet.

I compared the text TIPO posted on October 22 with the comparison tables in the legislators’ bill and in the Executive Yuan’s bill: the amended articles and their explanatory notes are identical in all three, so the article numbers and notes cited below apply to both bills. In our reading this text matches TIPO’s second draft on all five points, with differences in detail: for example, it adds court settlements to Article 10 and puts per-design revocation in a separate Article 141-2.

3. Icons and GUIs as designs in their own right

Today. Article 121(2) allows design patents for computer-generated icons and GUIs “applied to an article”. The bill’s explanatory notes describe this as treating an icon or GUI as a pattern shown temporarily through a display, which must be applied to an article to count as a design.

Under the bill. Computer-generated icons and GUIs would be deemed articles, so the shape, pattern or color of all or part of an icon or GUI could itself be the subject of a design patent. The explanatory notes point to projected interfaces such as projected keyboards and to holograms, and note that the International Classification for Industrial Designs has treated computer icons and GUIs as separate classes since its eighth edition. Item 1 of Article 124 would exclude “purely functional designs”, with QR codes and two-dimensional barcodes given as examples.

What TIPO has said about examination. In its responses to comments on the second draft, TIPO said a protectable icon or GUI would need a display or operating function, a requirement it intends to set in the Enforcement Rules or the design examination guidelines. TIPO also said that a screen layout that does not show what it is used for would be rejected as falling outside the definition, but an applicant who explains in the description how the image displays or is operated would meet it.

Picture a fitness app whose workout dashboard runs on phones and smartwatches and is projected onto a treadmill console. Under current law it must be filed as applied to an article; in our reading the bill matters most for interfaces like this, which are no longer tied to one product. Whatever happens to the bill, describing what each screen displays or lets the user do costs little now and is consistent with what TIPO has said it would expect.

4. Several similar designs in one application

Today. Each design needs its own application, except for a set of articles of the same class that are customarily sold or used together (Art. 129). Variants are filed as derivative designs in separate applications: the same applicant may do so, the filing date may not be earlier than the original’s, no derivative design may be filed once the grant of the original design patent is published, and only designs similar to the original qualify (Art. 127).

Under the bill. A new Article 129(3) would let the same applicant file two or more similar designs in one application, with one designated as the original and the others similar to it. A design similar only to another variant, not to the original, could not be included. The explanatory notes say an allowed combined application yields one design patent. After grant:

• the patentee could delete a design by post-grant correction (new item 1 of Art. 139(1)), and the notes say the remaining designs are no longer tied to the original, so deleting the original affects none of them;
• an invalidation action could target each design, the decision would be made design by design (new Art. 141-1), and revocation could be limited to individual designs (new Art. 141-2).

TIPO’s responses add that it does not plan to cap the number of designs, because the application fee would be counted per design, and that each design would be examined on its own for patentability requirements such as novelty and creativity. Separate derivative applications under Article 127 would remain.

From a business angle, bundling a kettle’s three spout shapes into one filing would simplify the paperwork, but each shape would still be examined on its own, so the bar would not be lower for any of them.

5. Grace period, divisionals and ownership disputes

Grace period. Today, a disclosure made by the applicant’s will, or against it, does not count against the application if the design application is filed within six months after the disclosure (Art. 122(3)). The exception does not cover a publication in a patent gazette, in Taiwan or abroad, that results from the applicant’s own patent filing (Art. 122(4)). The bill would change six months to twelve and keep the gazette exception. According to the explanatory notes, the Riyadh Design Law Treaty, adopted at WIPO on November 22, 2024, provides a twelve-month grace period for designs.

Do not skip the transitional article here. Under the bill, the twelve-month period, and combined applications for similar designs, would apply only to design applications filed after the amendment takes effect; the notes state that an application filed before then whose disclosure is already more than six months old would not be saved.

Divisionals. Today a design application may be divided only before the decision on reexamination (Art. 130(2)). The bill would add a second window: within three months after service of an allowance decision, whether from the first examination or from reexamination. The divisional would have to come from what the original application disclosed and could not be the same as the allowed design, and the allowed description and drawings of the original would not change. Applications already decided when the amendment takes effect, but still within the three months, would get the new rule.

Ownership disputes. Today, Article 10 lets parties change the owner’s name with TIPO only where an employer and an employee settle a dispute over rights under Articles 7 and 8. The bill would extend this to any dispute over the right to apply for a patent or over a patent, resolved by agreement, mediation, arbitration, court settlement or final judgment. While such a dispute is pending, an abandonment of the patent by the registered owner would be void (new Arts. 69(2) and 140(2)).

6. What to do now

Let me start with why I would not wait for the bill. A design cannot be patented if an identical or similar design was published or publicly used before the filing date, or if it was already known to the public (Art. 122(1)); a disclosure that falls outside the six months is part of that prior art. Under the bill’s transitional article, the twelve months would not reach applications filed before it takes effect.

• Count from the first public showing. For each design, note the date of the first public showing, such as a trade fair, a product launch or a teaser post, and file in Taiwan within six months after it.
• Count from the first filing, too. If you filed the design elsewhere first, the priority period for designs is six months (Art. 142(2)), and the grace period does not cover the publication of that earlier application in a patent gazette. Note both dates and plan the Taiwan filing around whichever period ends first. Our deadlines table lists the priority period, and our filing checklist covers the grace period.
• GUIs. File under current Article 121(2), applied to an article, and describe what the interface displays or does.
• Variants. Under current law, file derivative designs in separate applications before the grant of the original design patent is published.

We will update this page when the bill moves. If you are planning a Taiwan design filing for an icon, a GUI or a product family, write to us with the drawings or screenshots, the date and place of the first public disclosure, any earlier application (office, number and filing date), and the product or screen the design is used on. We will tell you which deadline applies under current law and, if the bill passes, how the plan would need to change. See also our patent services.