At 3:30 PM on July 5, 2024, Mok Ho Fai, Vice President of Content Protection Legal of the MPA/ACE; Lawrence Tan, Senior Investigator of the MPA/ACE; Han Shin, Director of CISSP/CISA, APAC Content Protection & Analytics of Warner Brothers Discovery; Cheah Yew Kuin, Principal Counsel, Antipiracy of Disney; and Diyanah Baharudin, Counsel, Global Content Protection and IP Policy of Netflix arrived at the Intellectual Property Branch, Taiwan High Prosecutors Office (the Office), and attended a meeting with Prosecutors of the Office. The visitors were accompanied by Winkler Partners: Gary Juo, Partner; Yi-Kai Chen, Attorney-at-law; Si-han Chen, Attorney-at-law; and George Bobyk, Legal Counsel.

Chief Prosecutor Tou-hui Chang presided over the meeting, thanking Winkler Partners for arranging the meeting. Head Prosecutor Hsin-hung Cheng, Prosecutor Amy H.M. Lo, Jonathan Chu, Wen-chi Huang, Kung-jen Hsu, and Julie Liu were all in attendance.

Prosecutor Lo briefed the guests about the major business conducted by the Office, introducing the duties and functions. Mr. Mok introduced the MPA and ACE, describing the ACE as the world’s leading content protection coalition dedicated to combatting the illegal acts of digital piracy that harm the thriving digital ecosystem. From the perspective of a rights holder, Mr. Mok appreciates what Taiwan’s enforcement has done for combating online piracy , and mentioned the challenges faced by rights holders in Taiwan, specifically regarding the challenges of the website and domain hopping by offenders and the issues that arise due to the cross-jurisdictional nature of piracy syndicates.

Committed to combating foreign rogue websites, law enforcement agencies of Taiwan have actively targeted domain names of foreign infringing websites to institute domain name seizures and petition the court to order rulings, which request the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) to block access to infringing websites. Prosecutor Liu said that a recent judgmens made regarding virtual confiscation signifies that the court has more consensus on domain name seizure rulings in favor of the rights holder. Prosecutor Huang asked Mr. Mok how “dynamic seizure” works in other countries, as this process does not (yet) exist in Taiwan’s legal framework. The meeting was a lively discussion.

Chief Prosecutor Chang concluded that “Taiwan's law enforcement agencies have worked hard to protect intellectual property rights for many years and have achieved results year after year. Cooperation among law enforcement agencies on cross-border intellectual property crimes have become a global consensus among advanced countries. Facing the challenges of Internet and cross-border law enforcement, law enforcement agencies in Taiwan will continue to find solutions and jointly promote the protection of intellectual property rights.”

After the meeting, the Prosecutors gave the guests a tour of the Office and continued the exchange of opinions regarding copyright enforcement practice.