Faced with the problem of a declining birthrate, an aging population and a declining labor force, Japan has been expecting women’s more active participation in society. Recently, certain data suggested that women’s participation is also important for promoting innovation. On July 16 2018, it was reported that Development Bank of Japan concluded that companies’ research and development would create higher economic value patents, if it involves both male and female inventors. The economic value in this analysis is calculated based on the value of patent assets calculated from the company’s market capitalization etc. and the number of papers that cite the patent. The result of analysis reportedly shows that the […]

Japan has a national holiday called “Marine Day”. It was July 16 this year. The purposes of the holiday is to give thanks to ocean’s bounty and to consider the importance of the ocean to Japan as an island nation. It’s good time to think about the destruction of the environment of the ocean. Ocean pollution arising from plastic garbage has been getting worse. Reportedly, more than 8 million tons of plastics enter the ocean every year. It destroys the ocean ecosystem and also possibly causes human health damage through seafood.   UN DECLARES WAR ON OCEAN PLASTIC Japan is the second largest in the per capita amount of garbage […]

The machine translation system of the Japan Patent Office (JPO) will be upgraded in May 2019. Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation (TDS), which was split off from Toshiba Corporation in July 2017, won a contract with the JPO for the  development of the system. According to the announcement on July 10 2018, in order to improve translation accuracy, the new system will adopt the technologies to: automatically extract Claims and fixed format parts from a patent document using TDS’s natural language processing system and appropriately distribute them to NMT (Neural Machine Translation), RBMT (Rule Based Machine Translation), and SMT (Statistical Machine Translation); and format input sentence. As for NMT, it will […]

Japan starts to study a blockchain system for contents management. The government is aiming to support Japanese contents business (e.g. game, character) by providing a system which realizes smooth copyrights handling by using smart contract and other functions based on blockchain technology. The Japanese government is reportedly planning to proceed to the validation phase in 2019. In addition to this government project, Sony seems considering using blockchain technology for Digital Rights Management (DRM). Reportedly, Sony has filed a patent application, which was published by USPTO on April 26 2018, for using blockchain technology to manage ownership of purchased games for PlayStation 4. Blockchain technology-based IP platform is becoming hot. So […]

On April 25 2018, the Japan Intellectual Property High Court gave a decision that made Twitter users uneasy. In this case, a photographer who has the copyright of a photo demanded Twitter, Inc. and Twitter Japan disclose the information on the user who had posted the photo on Twitter without permission from the photographer as well as the information on the users who had retweeted that Tweet using the Twitter Retweet function. For the user who tweeted the photo, the court ruled that Tweet represents copyright infringement and ordered Twitter, Inc. to disclose the user information (i.e. email address) to the photographer. On the other hand, for the users who […]

Japan may expand design protection beyond definition of ‘design’ in the design law. As previously reported, Japan has been discussing ‘design’ to strengthen the Japanese companies’ competitiveness since July 2017, and finally published the report on May 23 2018. From IP perspective, the report suggests amendment of the design law to address increasingly diverse ways of design under development of technologies. Specifically, the government will consider the expansion of the scope of protection of design to the following designs. Projection design that is design of image projected on a wall, the human body or the like Spatial design such as interior and exterior design of buildings or stores The Japanese […]

On June 19 2018, a Japanese e-commerce company Mercari, Inc. goes public on the Mathers market. It operates the “Mercari” marketplace app and is the first in Japan to reach “unicorn” status. Therefore, stock market players expect that it brings about positive impact on the market. In the Mercari marketplace, users can sell unnecessary possessions and turn them into money. Recently, more people willingly throw away unnecessary possessions with the current danshari boom. In the meantime, even if it is unnecessary for you, there is someone who wants it. So, many people use this app to sell their unnecessary possessions (monetization), rather than just throwing them away. Similar action has […]

On May 16, The Japan Patent Office (JPO) released the updates on business-related inventions which are defined as invention which realizes a business method by using information and communication technology. As previously reported, patent applications of business-related inventions have been on an increasing trend since 2011, and approximately 7,900 patent applications for business-related inventions were filed in 2016 (increase of 11.1% over the previous year), in spite of the downward trend in the number of domestic patent applications. Especially, patent applications in the financial sector (which should include FinTech) markedly increased in 2016 (increase of 40% over the previous year). The patent grant rate for business-related inventions is almost 70%. […]

I had many opportunities to talk with intellectual property service providers during my two weeks trip to Seattle. Some of these firms devise a way to improve price competitiveness. Generally, in our globalized world, jobs tend to move to cheaper-labor countries or regions. The IP industry seems to be no exception. As an example, there is an Indian firm that undertakes patent prosecution work for the US patent applications. This firm provides  (i) a patent application drafting service and (ii) a prosecution service package which covers from patent application filing to registration with reasonable fixed fee for their clients who seek to file patent applications to the US. This firm […]

Japan may become a better option as a place to solve international disputes even for foreign companies. It is reported that the Japanese government is considering legal revision to make it easier for foreign lawyers to work in Japan, and may introduce the bill to the extraordinary Diet session this year. Specifically, the legal revision is reportedly being considered in the following two aspects. Shortens the requirement of experience of having performed professional duties to two years (which includes one year of experience in other countries) from three years (which includes two years of experience in other countries). Makes it possible to establish a joint law firm by Japanese lawyers […]