The Board of Directors provides visions, long-term strategic planning, polices & guidelines, and directions for APIPA. It consists of representatives from funding agencies, AT&T (from 1996 Lucent Technology as representative of donator; from 2001 onwards Agere Systems Inc. became a donator), ITRI, III , Lee & Li Attorneys-at-Law, and industries concerned with intellectual property rights. The chairman is elected by the Board of Directors and will be the spokesman for the foundation. The current chairman is Dr. Chin-Tay Shih, Academician, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Professor of College of Technology Management & Morris Chang Chair Professor, National Tsing Hua University, and the board members are:
The managing director is responsible for implementing decisions of the Board and to supervise the operations of APIPA. The current Managing Director is Steven Lai.
The Core Team assists the Managing Director in carrying out intellectual property rights plans, promoting information services, and conducting training.
This office is responsible for the administrative operations, including arranging meetings for the Board of Directors, the Advisory Committee and the Core Team. In addition, it facilitates the programs of the Intellectual Property Thesis Scholarships, and the Award for Professionals for Overseas Training & Study.
This office is responsible for financial, accounting, and expenditure administration.
After three years of intensive negotiation, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and AT&T (now Agere System Inc., formerly part of Lucent Technology, and formerly part of AT&T) reached a broad Patent Cross License Agreement in March 1993. Encouraged by this agreement, many companies became AT&T?s licensees. This Agreement enabled them to utilize AT&T?s patents and enjoyed a lower royalty rate.
To bring Taiwan, Republic of China closer to the goal of developing into an Asia-Pacific Regional Operations Center, AT&T pledged a portion of the collected royalties to establish a non-profit foundation. The foundation?s objectives are to promote intellectual property management, IP awareness and more important to build an IP related multi-purposes databases to serve the industries in Taiwan and the world through World Wide Web. Through these efforts, the Republic of China hopes to become the hub of intellectual property rights-related information center, thus to improve both economic and trading relationships with other countries through fair and reciprocal trade.
As the co founders of this foundation, ITRI and III also donated fund to the foundation, and Lee& Li Attorneys-at-Law provided legal services as part of their pledge. The Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Association (APIPA) thus was established on June 3,1994, through the joint endeavors of international technological and law professional.