Under the “Act to Revise a part of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act (May 30, 2018 Article 33)”, the JPO has greatly simplified the existing procedure to reduce fees, for the purpose of helping small and micro entities. As previously,…
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Japanese fashion brand ISSEY MIYAKE announced on June 13 that it is filing a Petition for a provisional injunction against a Japanese rival shop, BARCOS, for a handbag it claims is too similar in design to its own BAO BAO…
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JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers), the music licensing corporation that manages copyright for a vast swath of music in Japan, continues its fight against unlicensed use of music it controls. On May 13, 2019, it…
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Toyota Motor Corporation announced in Tokyo on April 8 that it would be releasing its patents related to hybrid vehicle (HV) technologies, totaling over 23,000 patents, for free use up to 2030. These patents relate to the motor, power control…
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In 2018 Tasuku Honjo, a professor at Kyoto Univeristy, was awarded a Nobel Prize along with other researchers for developments of cancer-fighting technologies. The protein Honjo found in immune cells, programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1), was found to be a…
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As mentioned in an earlier article, the imperial period name may not be trademarked on its own but may only be registered in a trademark when combined with other elements in a way that can be distinctive. The new imperial…
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* See an update on the situation from 2020. The Republic of Korea (“South Korea”)’s courts expanded precedent for financial punishment of Japanese companies on March 25, 2019, when it approved a takeover of six patents and two trademarks worth…
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A recent addition to the drink offerings in Japanese shops and vending machines has been “Wonda TEA COFFEE,” produced and of course trademarked by major drink company Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd (Tokyo). Drinks in this line combine cafe latte…
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Japan, seeking to keep with the challenges that digital reproduction makes for copyright infringement prevention, has been aiming to bring the law more to bear on downloaders of pirated materials online. This comes in the wake of the Mangamura manga…
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Saitama Prefecture is humanly and materially blessed. Just north of Tokyo Prefecture, it is home to over 7 million and close to 2,000 people per square kilometer (5,000/sq. mile), and many businesses. [3] Yet its smaller companies, like those in…
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