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 […]

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 […]

During a business trip to Shenzhen, we had a chance to talk with a Chinese company Andun which provides an intellectual property protection platform against counterfeit products. Andun has been building a network of lawyers to investigate infringing products and stop infringement activities for its customers. An interesting point of the business model is that Andun does not charge for such activities to the customers. Settlement money and compensation for damage are its revenue source for Andun and its allied lawyers. The customers can not only remove infringing products from the marketplace at no cost, but also receive a part of the damages. Therefore, this business model is realized at […]

I will make a business trip to Shenzhen, China next week to attend an IP-related event called IPBC (Intellectual Property Business Congress) and also to have several meetings with Chinese firms to discuss potential businesses. As a matter of fact, every time I visit China, especially Beijing, I’m worried about air pollution while checking a website which shows air quality, since I have asthma. Further concern is internet access environment. In China, I cannot use many of tools I use every day, such as google, skype, facebook, twitter. It’s very inconvenient, or rather I feel it limits my ability. Nevertheless, we expand opportunities to visit China. Because we see increased […]

I attended a trading show specializing in character and brand licensing, Licensing Japan, which was held in Tokyo on April 4th to 6th 2018. Japanese people of all ages love characters of TV animations, movies, games and the like. It’s said that some people seek healing through such characters. The market size of Japanese domestic character goods is around 1.6 trillion JPY (approximately 16 billion dollars). In the Japanese market, Japan-origin characters such as pikachu and precure are strong, as expected, but recently the ratio of overseas characters is getting bigger. In character licensing, in many cases, a company who wish to develop its products using a particular character applies for a […]

After having posted the article regarding the intellectual property business matching model, we received inquiries on the model. So, we would like to explain it in a little more detail here, based on the material we received from a local government. It’s called “Kawasaki model” in Japan, because Kawasaki-City started a project under this model as a pioneer in 2007 to revitalize local industry while involving large companies successfully, and attracted attention from other local governments. The basic concept of this model is patented technology transfer from large companies to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It could be a win-win solution for both large companies and SMEs. Large companies desire […]