I was once involved in a government program to support regional projects that would make effective use of the intellectual properties of the universities in that region. We evaluated the business models and core technologies of the projects. Then, we often faced the problem that the patents on their core technologies are jointly owned by […]

The Japanese government has begun consideration of amendment of the patent correction system. The patent correction system allows patent owners to correct patent claims, specification or drawings within certain limits, as a defense against the assertion of invalidity.  Under the current law, where there is a licensee, the patent owner cannot make corrections without the […]

Wagyu is the Japanese breeds of beef cattle that has been improved over the years by Japanese breeders. Now Japan is considering strengthening the protection of genetic resources, i.e. sperm and fertilized eggs, from livestock such as Wagyu. In fact, Wagyu genetic resources had been exported for commercial use until around 1998, but no exports […]

Satoshi Watanabe authored an article entitled “Patent changes create friction” in Intellectual Property Magazine. The article can be accessed here. 

Previously on this blog, we featured a story about a fight on patent royalty between a university researcher and a licensee company. And, it suggested a problem of a talent shortage for intellectual property in the university.  Licensing Revenues of Japanese Universities When talking about licensing revenues of universities, Japanese universities are often compared with American universities. […]

In response to the global trends, the Japanese government announced a policy to strengthen the personal data protection on April 25 2019. It will enhance the right for individuals to demand companies to stop using their personal information. Under the current law, individuals can demand it, only if such data has been fraudulently acquired or used for […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]