10月12日に日本を襲った超大型台風「ハギビス」。私は無事でしたが、翌日には21件の河岸崩壊が報告されました。日本では9月上旬に台風ファクサイが発生したばかりです。ファクサイは、関東地方に上陸した台風の中では、記録的な強さだったと言われています。この台風の影響で、まだ回復できていない人もいます。 最近の台風は非常に強力です。第4次全米気候評価報告書（NCA4）で予測されているように、台風の降雨量や強度が増加しています。これは、地球温暖化の影響で海面温度が上昇していることが原因です。

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.  Arrangement of Issues using web conferencing in some courts: Around February 2020 Submission of briefs using cloud services in some courts : Fiscal 2021 Online oral argument: Fiscal 2022 (after revision of Civil Procedure Law) Online filing of lawsuit: Not yet scheduled It has been pointed out that Japan is behind Singapore, China, South Korea […]

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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) […]

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 […]