Happy New Year! In 2019, there is a big event in Japan. The current crown prince ascends to the throne on May 1. In conjunction with that, Japan’s era name is also changed. Reportedly, the new name will be announced on April 1, one month prior to the enthronement, to ease the transition including necessary […]

The previous article on possible revision of IP litigation system covered different positions taken by large companies and SMEs; – i.e SMEs asking for improvement of the status of patent holders and large companies wanting the maintenance of  the status quo. Now another confrontation between them has been obtaining attention. According to the document distributed […]

There may be an increase in cases where foreign companies acquire Japanese SMEs. Japan is facing the issue of business succession of SMEs. Many SMEs have problems of aging managers and undecided successor. The government believes that there is a potential that approximately 6.5 million jobs and GDP of JPY 22 trillion (USD 200 billion) […]

The discussion on possible revision of Japan’s intellectual property dispute resolution system, reported in the previous article, has started from last October, and the second meeting was held on November 21 2018 at the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), on which I had a chance to sit in. The objective of the meeting was to hear […]

In Japan, a platform business has been considered just a vehicle for service providers and users, and assumed no responsibility. However, in response to recent trends in regulations on platform businesses (e.g. against Google) in Europe, Japan has commenced studies toward tightening of regulations since July 2018, and published the draft interim report on November […]

On September 27 2018, Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of the claim by Nintendo against a company which had lent costumes of Nintendo’s game characters such as Mario to make its customers ride a go-kart on public road under the name of “MariCar”. The defendant appealed to IP High Court the next day, September […]

As most people know, Japan’s market is controlled by the heavy hand of government. To make it easier for companies to start new businesses, the government prepared the ”Gray Area Resolution System” in 2014. This system allows business operators to make inquiries about whether or not some regulation is applied to a new business they […]

A Japanese local government Kawasaki-city, which plays an active role in patent licensing between large companies and SMEs as presented here, has set out on a new endeavor. Kawasaki-city invites creators to an IP business matching event to ask them to propose applications of patented technologies of participant large companies. For this, Kawasaki-city works with […]

Here are some useful patent research & analysis methods to identify salable or licensable patents, responding to previous article. 1. Technology trend research  This research is for reviewing whether or not a subject patent is likely to be used, from the viewpoint of technology trends. For a technology that is not used in the market, […]

“Patent utilization” has been a buzz word in Japanese IP industry. There seems to be an increasing number of companies thinking that they should make effective use of patents that haven’t been used by themselves; i.e. monetize such patents by selling or licensing them to others. Actually, a client of ours has asked me what […]