Outline of Japan’s patent and design law amendment 2019

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 […]

Japan to consider expanding design protection

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 […]