Established on November 1, 1985, TOPTEAM International Patent & Trademark Office (TOPTEAM) experienced radical changes and transformations as a young company trekking through the IP wilderness to maturity. While expanding its business, TOPTEAM also succeeded in confirming its business philosophy and development direction over the years. From a small office at the pioneering stage to a mid-sized enterprise of 200 employees, TOPTEAM’s evolution can be divided into the following four stages: pioneering stage (1985-1994); rapid growth stage (1995-2010); maturity stage (2011-2019); and multi-development stage (2020-the present ).

Pioneering Stage (1985)

TOPTEAM was founded by its current sole owner Mr. Henry C.W. Hong on November 1, 1985 and was officially registered on March 1, 1986. TOPTEAM was originally established as a partnership firm and there were fewer than 20 staff members at the very beginning.

At the time, the patent environment in Taiwan was a wilderness. The few existing patent agencies primarily engaged in patent imports, namely assisting global companies in obtaining patents in Taiwan by translating foreign patent specifications. On top of that, the patent demand of domestic companies at the time focused mostly on mechanical inventions, lack of chemical, electrical and other types of inventions few people heard of patent right protection.

As patent import cases were usually awarded to bigger, reputed patent agencies than small ones, when considering TOPTEAM’s future prospects, Mr. Hong decided to concentrate on cross-border patent prosecution, helping Taiwanese companies to obtain foreign patent rights for their inventions. He led TOPTEAM’s patent engineers to focus efforts on patent drafting in Chinese, English and Japanese, and to accumulate practical experience in patent filings and strategy planning. As the majority of TOPTEAM’s patent engineers at the pioneering stage were graduated from Taiwan’s top universities (National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University and National Cheng Kung University), their extraordinary performance truly facilitated the growth of TOPTEAM.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) was one of TOPTEAM’s important clients in the early days. The firm initially assisted its Mechanical & Mechatronics Systems Research Laboratories in obtaining domestic and international patents. TOPTEAM’s performance was well recognized and then able to expand its service network to other ITRI laboratories (such as Green Energy & Environment; Material & Chemical; Biomedical Technology & Devices; Information & Communications; and Electronic & Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories) and even to the high-technology industry that appeared later, such as the global foundry and transnational computer industries. Today, TOPTEAM still has a very strong relationship with these clients.

In the third year, TOPTEAM was also recognized by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan as a qualified partner. This partnership, which continues today, opened the door for TOPTEAM to the Japanese market.