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 system update and other preparation. From intellectual property perspective, names of goods or services that are just recognized as the era name are not allowed to register trademarks in Japan, because of lack of distinctiveness. The names combined an era name and other non-distinctive word (e.g. generic names) are also not allowed to register trademarks. […]

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 in a government-appointed working group discussing the improvement of business conditions for SMEs or subcontracting companies, some experts in the field of antitrust and subcontracting law have brought up the issue of intellectual property rights and know-how having been siphoned from subcontracting companies into large companies in dominant bargaining position. In response to this suggestion, […]

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) will be lost by 2025, if left unaddressed, according to the document published in January 2018. Therefore, in order to prevent closing down of good-standing SMEs, the government is considering introducing them to foreign companies via JETRO.   JETRO told us that it has been discussing it in the following directions: JETRO will be granted […]

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 opinions from users of the litigation system, i.e. a lawyer, Masakazu IWAKURA (Partner at TMI Associates), Keidanren for the voice of big business in Japan, and The Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) for the voice of SMEs. In their presentations, large companies seemed to want the continuation of the status, while SMEs want […]

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 5 2018 to invite public opinion until December 4 and commence to discuss detailed regulations after the turn of the year. Here are several issues addressed in the report which will be discussed next year. Market manipulability based on algorithmic profiling and opaqueness of the technologies. The necessity of disclosure of code or algorithm will […]

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 28. Here is the summary of the decision. – Prohibit the use of marks such as “MariCar” The court recognized that a Japanese expression for “MariCar” (i.e. “マリカー”) is a well-known mark as an abbreviated mark for Nintendo’s game “Mario Kart”, and issued an injunction against the use of marks “マリカー”, “MariCar” and two other […]

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 are going to start. Recently, a company which provides a software which helps users prepare trademark applications used this system to make an inquiry about whether selling this software violates a provision of Patent Attorneys Act which restricts the services provided by other than patent attorneys or patent professional corporations. Then, Japan Patent Office (JPO) […]

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 an agent company CREEK & RIVER to ask dispatch of the creators. Here is a press release (in Japanese) for this project, published by CREEK & RIVER. In this scheme, the key is whether or not the creators can propose specific products that SMEs are most interested in implementing such patented technologies. Also, extra care […]

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, a patent for that technology has less opportunity to be sold or licensed. 2. Market research This is for researching current and future market size and trends of products or services related to a subject patent. Some investment is required to enter a new business or developing a new technologies. If the expected return does […]

“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 salable or licensable patents are like. First of all, you may need to know when a patent transaction occurs. One is when a company has to use a patent. In other words, it is the case that the company possibly infringes someone’s patent. We may be able to call this case an assertion-based transaction, since […]