Taiwan boasts a strong legal market, thanks in part to its leading role in semiconductor and other high-tech manufacturing. The legal market in Taipei – and, indeed, elsewhere around Taiwan – is robust and competitive, giving it outsize strength for a jurisdiction with a working age population of just 16.55 million people.

Top brands around the world rely on companies in Taiwan for their technology needs – and the people of Taiwan understand just how crucial suppliers in Taiwan are for the rest of the world. In a survey aimed at consumers in Taiwan, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) was named as Taiwan’s strongest brand as part of Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Asia Top 100 Brands research.

“It’s interesting how high a B2B supplier like TSMC has risen in a consumer survey, yet the global crisis over chip supplies after the pandemic has put the brand in the spotlight,” Minnie Wang wrote for Campaign.

The Economist reported earlier in 2021 that TSMC controls a staggering amount of the global computer chip market. “It controls 84 percent of the market for chips with the smallest, most efficient circuits on which the products and services of the world’s biggest technology brands, from Apple in America to Alibaba in China, rely. As demand for the most sophisticated chips surges thanks to the expansion of fast communication networks and cloud computing, TSMC is pouring vast additional sums of money into expanding its dominance of the cutting edge,” the magazine reported.

These days, Taiwan’s strength in technology extends to pharmaceuticals. In August 2021, President Tsai Ing-wen received her first dose of the island’s domestically developed coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine, developed by Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp., was given emergency approval by regulators in July. Taiwan reportedly has 59 contract manufacturing pharma sites, including 44 with EMA or FDA approval, and seven sites with Chinese approval, making it potentially a big player in pharma in the future. At the moment, there is a lack of international pharma companies and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) in Taiwan, Pharmaceutical Technology reported this month. A total of 55 of 58 pharma manufacturing pharma manufacturing companies that own facilities in the province are headquartered domestically.

All of this suggests that Taiwanese industry will continue to invest heavily in tech spending, which in turn will keep the countries IP lawyers busy into the foreseeable future.

With this continuing interest in intellectual property protection in Taiwan, we turned to IP professionals in the region in order to understand better what clients need today. Asia IP asked a large number of professionals – mostly in-house counsel and corporate legal managers – what they were looking for from their legal service providers. From their answers, we have compiled our list of 50 Taiwan IP Experts, those lawyers who understand just what their clients need and are able to provide them with the best practical advice.

Today’s clients are looking for more than just a degree from a top-notch university and a couple of decades of practice. In order to be an outstanding provider of intellectual property advice, a lawyer must also be capable of understanding how intellectual property impacts the rest of his client’s business, and be able to provide practical, real-world, business-savvy advice. She must be able to provide sound advice on the current law, but also needs to be able to understand coming trends which are likely to impact her client’s business.

Unlike days past when she might have played just a bit role, today’s IP Expert is every bit a full-fledged team member.

Taiwan’s legal market has shown signs of fragmentation; there is more than a smattering of new and upcoming firms represented on our list. In fact, 22 different firms account for either one or two lawyers on the list. Saint Island International Patent & Law Offices, Tai E International Patent and Law Office, TIPLO (Taiwan International Patent & Law Office) and Top Team International Patent & Trademark Office each have three lawyers on the list.

Two of Taiwan’s heavy hitters represent 20 percent of the list, collectively. Tsai, Lee & Chen placed four lawyers on the list (Crystal J. Chen, Candy K.Y. Chen, Victor S.C. Lee and Jesse K.Y. Peng), while Lee and Li placed six on the list (Daisy Wang, Dennis Huang, Roger Chang, Hsiu-Ru Chien, Ruey-Sen Tsai and Ta-Chung Chiang).

Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice.

All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s Taiwan IP Experts. – GREGORY GLASS