Just recently (October 2021), Nippon Steel surprised many by suing not only a Chinese steel company Baoshan Iron & Steel but also its customer, Toyota, for infringing its own patent rights on steel products (*1). Now, Nippon Steel has surprised us even more by suing Mitsui & Co (*2). This is because Mitsui & Co […]

A former Softbank employee is charged with violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act for illegally taking Softbank’s technical information to Rakuten Mobile, his new employer. It was the information on 5G, ultra-fast and high-capacity communication standard. The first trial was held at the Tokyo District Court on December 7. Reportedly, the former employee stated that […]

Algorithms are running everywhere in our lives. When Amazon recommends goods based on my purchase history, it won’t cause much of a problem. However, when it comes to personal credit score or store rating, it can have serious consequences depending on the score. In May of last year, a chain of Korean restaurants filed a […]

Hashtags are often used on social networking sites. On the Japanese flea market app “Mercari”, a person was selling his/her own products on his/her own sales site with a hashtag that uses another company’s brand name (trademark) as its keyword. The use of such a hashtag is an infringement of trademark rights, a court ruled […]

On May 20 2021, it was reported that FAST RETAILING CO., LTD., which operates UNIQLO, lost a patent case against an IT company Asterisk Inc. Asterisk owns a patent (JP6469758) for technology of reading data from RFID tags attached to the products, which is used in self-checkout machines. Then, they required Fast Retailing to pay license fees for […]

Japanese retail company Ryohin Keikaku, which sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods under the name of MUJI (Mujirushi Ryohin), lost a trademark infringement case in China. Reportedly, on December 11 2019, the Beijing Municipal High People’s Court ordered Ryohin Keikaku to pay CNY 600,000 (USD 85,336) in damages to a Chinese company.  […]

On September 11 2019, Japan IP High Court decided a patent infringement case between Japanese game companies, Capcom and Koei Tecmo Games (Here is the decision).  In this case, Capcom alleges Koei Tecmo has infringed on its two patents (JP3350773 and JP3295771) in Koei Tecmo’s action games (Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors) and horror game (Fatal Frame). The […]

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.  […]

On June 7 2019, Japan Intellectual Property High Court ruled standard for calculating damages, especially deductible expenses, in a patent infringement case on carbonated pack cosmetics. Below is the summary of the decision. 1. Presumed damages Japanese patent law provides provisions to make it easier for patent holders to prove the amount of damages. One […]

Ultraman, it’s one of Japan’s superheros like America’s Superman. A copyright holder of Ultraman, Tsuburaya Productions has been in dispute with Chinese production companies which produced and released a film featuring Ultraman in 2017. These Chinese companies now released another film featuring Ultraman. In response to this, Tsuburaya Productions made a statement on January 17 2019 […]