For companies that provide universal services via the Internet, responding to laws and regulations that differ from country to country may be a problem. Twitter’s headquarters may be now considering how to respond to the decision of Japan’s Supreme Court.  Previously on this blog, we reported a copyright infringement case in which the IP High […]

Japan has entered the Golden Week holiday. It is usually the time for many people to enjoy vacations in the country or overseas. However, because of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) this year, the government is requesting us to stay at home. Many people feel stressed about by the inability to freely spend precious […]

Recently, I found a misleading website which provides registration service for intellectual property. It provides a global registry for patents, designs and trademarks on the blockchain network. It says you can register an intellectual property in minutes at a cost of less than $15. This website should add more explanation. The registration on the blockchain […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

Piracy website blocking has been one of the most controversial topics in Japan. In April 2018, the government decided on a policy to legislate for piracy website blocking by Internet providers, to combat piracy websites with copyright infringing content of manga, animation etc. However, it has been strongly opposed by lawyers and academics out of […]

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 […]

In Japan, there have not been many copyright infringement cases on choreography, though Japanese copyright law exemplifies “dance works” as an example of copyrighted works. On September 20 2018, Osaka District Court issued an injunction against the use of the plaintiff’s choreographies for the following five songs and awarded approx. JPY 430,000 (approx. USD 3,900) […]