日本のノーベル賞受賞者がオプジーボ特許のロイヤルティ率の引き上げのために国民の支持を求める
Fighting over patent royalty rate

2018年にノーベル生理学・医学賞を受賞した日本人科学者の本庶佑氏が、日本の製薬会社である小野薬品工業と特許使用料をめぐって争っています。背景 報道によれば、2006年に、本庶氏と小野薬品工業は、がん治療薬「オプジーボ」(一般名:ニボルマブ)に応用されたPD-1に関する特許のライセンス契約を締結しました。しかし、オプジーボの開発が進んでいた2011年に、本庶氏がロイヤリティの引き上げを要求しましたが、交渉は期待したようには進みませんでした。そこで、本庶氏は、2019年4月10日に、世間の支持を得るために、契約の背景や概要を公表するという手段に出ました。[…]

Corporate Japan to launch a consortium to create new businesses
consortium to create new businesses

It is reported that a consortium called “InnovationTech Consortium” launches in Japan on April 15 2019. In this consortium, the member companies share and exchange information on technologies and know-hows that lead to new businesses. Reportedly, more than 40 Japanese companies will participate in the consortium at first, which include Toyota, All Nippon Airways, Asahi Group, ITOCHU, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, and Dentsu, which are all Japanese leading companies. They expect 100 companies to join the consortium by 2020. Also, they will not prevent their competitors from joining the consortium. In the consortium, a company shares a business model and/or technologies under consideration, and other companies having an interest in […]

Monetization-oriented international patent filing strategy
Monetization-oriented international patent filing strategy

How do you decide in which country you file a patent application? As you know, in order to obtain patent protection in multiple countries, you are required to file a patent application and obtain a patent in each country. Generally, you may choose filing countries on the basis of the existence of your business within the limits of your budgets. In addition, you may also consider potential market size, the situation of IP system of countries etc. For example, China, the U.S. and Germany are the most litigious countries and patentee friendly. The figure below, which is excerpted from the materials prepared by Michael C. Elmer for the Global IP Project, […]

Japan antitrust case: FTC cancels exclusion order to Qualcomm
Japan FTC decision on Qualcomm

On March 13 2019, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) made a decision to cancel the exclusion order against Qualcomm which had been issued on September 28 2009 and appealed by Qualcomm on November 24 of that year. It took almost a decade! It’s too long, but Qualcomm has finally got an expected result.    The main issue was whether or not the Qualcomm’s license agreement on intellectual properties for CDMA mobile wireless communication, which includes the following provisions, possibly restrains the business activities of Japanese mobile device manufacturers and disrupts fair competition. Royalty free license of IP of the Japanese manufacturers to Qualcomm The manufacturers’ Non-assertion obligation against Qualcomm The manufacturers’ Non-assertion […]

Japan fails to amend copyright law against piracy yet again

On March 13 2019, the Japanese government reportedly gave up submitting an amendment of copyright law to the Diet. (Please read “Japan to amend copyright law to combat piracy” for the proposed amendment.) It was specifically for anti-piracy, but it generated strong public reaction to the expansion of punishment against downloading of pirated copies. It is very rare for the government to stop the submission at this stage. In fact, content creators, such as The Japan Cartoonists Association, also have expressed concern about the proposed amendment. For whom was the anti-piracy measures? The problem is that the consensus-building process was not appropriate in this case. The government just paid attention […]

特許法 ・意匠法 2019年改正の概要

On March 1 2019, the Japanese government announced that it submitted a bill to the Diet to amend the laws of patent, utility model, design and trademark. The major part of the amendment lies in the patent law and the design law. And we reported most of them in the previous articles. But we would like to pull them together here to show the outline of the amendment of Japanese patent law and design law for your reference. Patent Law Introduction of inspection procedure. Courts will be able to issue the inspection order, in response to the patent holder’s motion, by which neutral experts inspect the facility of the alleged infringer to […]

Japan to develop a blockchain-based content service platform

We previously reported that the Japanese government initiated a blockchain project for content management. Finally, the government has set up a budget to develop a blockchain-based content service platform. This platform allows for monetization of derivative works. It records the relationship between contributors of an original content and its derivative works. Also, it enables to distribute income from the contents to the contributors. A smart contract will help to manage the permission of creating derivative works and the income sharing. The government expects this platform to create a new content market.  Conceptual scheme of the service platform The attached chart shows the conceptual scheme of the service platform disclosed by the government. Two […]

Japan to amend copyright law to combat piracy

Piracy is a serious problem. Piracy causes heavy damage to copyright holders and content business. The amount of damage for manga and animation in Japan is about JPY 200 billion (USD 1.8 billion), according to a government survey in 2014. In order to solve this problem, the Japanese government tried to legislate piracy website blocking. However, the government had to give up the legislation for that (See here about this). Because it encountered strong opposition, considering infringement on the constitutionally guaranteed secrecy of communication. Therefore, the government is going to implement an alternative measures to combat piracy. The report published on February 4 2019 and approved by the advisory committee on […]

If blockchain existed then, Ultraman copyright disputes would have never happened

Ultraman, it’s one of Japan’s superheros like America’s Superman. A copyright holder of Ultraman, Tsuburaya Productions has been in dispute with Chinese production companies which produced and released a film featuring Ultraman in 2017. These Chinese companies now released another film featuring Ultraman. In response to this, Tsuburaya Productions made a statement on January 17 2019 that “we will take all necessary legal steps to protect our legal rights.” (The featured photo is a scene in the film trailer). This case is actually not so simple like typical Chinese copycat cases. The disputes began with a Thai businessman (Chaiyo Productions), who had friendship with a former president of Tsuburaya Productions, claiming […]

Slowly changing Japan’s IP dispute resolution system

We Japanese often say “お変わりありませんか?(okawari-arimasenka?)” that means, in English, “Nothing has happened (or everything remains unchanged)?” to someone whom we meet after a long interval. No change is a good thing in Japanese culture. I’m just wondering if we can change such a greeting to something by which we can expect or accelerate change. JPO commissioner Naoko Munakata mentioned the necessity of improvement of Japanese IP litigation system and demonstrated the high level of interest, in an opening speech for Global IP Strategy Forum 2019 which was held on January 28 2019 in Tokyo. However, I have seen a difference of opinion between SMEs and large enterprises,  a conservative court, […]