Super Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan on October 12. I was safe, but 21 riverbank failures were reported the next day. Japan was just hit by Typhoon Faxai in early September. Typhoon Faxai was said to be the most powerful typhoon on record which had ever landed Kanto region (Tokyo is included there). Some people have […]

We launched a new project working with a US-based M&A advisory firm. In this project, we help Japanese companies find opportunities for investment in and partnerships with foreign technology companies. It includes setting up of joint ventures to manufacture products of such technology companies, and also do sales and marketing in Japan and other Asian […]

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 […]

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, […]

“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 […]

As previously reported, the progress of open innovation is slow in Japan. However, the government has been actively developing measures to promote open innovation. For example, it prepared “University Factbook” which provides contact information of business-academia collaboration office, performance of joint / contract research, performance of patent filing and utilization, and technology field of patent […]

Open innovation is essential for companies. It has been said for quite some time now. However, many of Japanese companies seem to be not yet able to make good use of open innovation, comparing to European and American companies. The Japanese government released the White Paper on Open Innovation (the second edition) on June 27 2018. […]

A global automotive company is looking for new services or application for connected car. So, we are looking for persons who are willing to develop new ideas or innovations (inventions) for the automotive company via an open-innovation platform. In this project, we are working with Xinova which provides the open-innovation platform with inventor network worldwide.  We […]

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 […]

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 […]