On May 20 2021, it was reported that FAST RETAILING CO., LTD., which operates UNIQLO, lost a patent case against an IT company Asterisk Inc. Asterisk owns a patent (JP6469758) for technology of reading data from RFID tags attached to the products, which is used in self-checkout machines. Then, they required Fast Retailing to pay license fees for […]

It was reported that the Japanese government has begun to consider a system that would allow companies to pledge intangible assets such as technologies and customer base as collateral in one fell swoop. Nikkei: 中小の無形資産を一括で担保に　金融庁、融資改革で支援 In Japan, it has been pointed out that bank loans, especially to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), focus on real estate […]

On November 21 2019, Japan and India signed an agreement to start a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program. The PPH is a cooperative program to facilitate an acquisition of a patent by utilizing search and examination results at other patent office. Japan is the world’s first country that corporates with India for such a […]

Finally, Japan’s courts are going to use information technologies for proceedings. Despite widespread use of IT in daily life, we have been required to conduct paper-based procedures and go to court for a brief preparatory proceeding. It would be welcome to improve this situation, but it’s too slow. The reported rough schedule is as follows.  […]

Japan Patent Office (JPO) published an annual report on July 12 2019. According to the report, 313,567 patent applications were filed in Japan in 2018. And, 253,000 patent applications among them were filed by domestic applicants. It slightly decreased than last year. As you may know, Japanese companies have been reducing investment in Japanese patents. However, […]

JPO’s SEP advisory opinion service has been updated for cases received on or after July 1 2019. This service started from April 2018, to provide a JPO’s non-binding opinion on whether a particular patent is a standard essential patent (SEP). We covered this service in the previous article here. The changes in the user’s guide include the […]

Do you think Japanese patents are difficult to use? I visited Chinese IT companies early this month. A person in charge of licensing said Japanese patents are difficult to use, as well as Korean patents. Because the specification, claims and other documents for Japanese patents are written in Japanese language, he is not sure if […]

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 […]

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 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 […]