On October 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of Japan issued its decision to dismiss the appeal against the IP High Court’s March 2021 ruling regarding the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC)’s trying to force music…
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Sushi is big business in Japan, of course, and two major rivals on the conveyor belt sushi market are the Kappa Sushi and Hama Zushi (Sushi) chains. Recently, these two restaurants came into the news as a former executive from…
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Japan plans to open a synergistic court this October—the Business Court. The new Business Court, a little further away from Tokyo Station (Nakameguro), is to house the IP High Court and intellectual property matters with other business-related legal courts together…
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The Japan Patent Office Annual Report (特許行政年次報告書) of 2022 (JPOAR 2022), issued late last month, sums up trends through 2021 in particular with a variety of data (including comparisons with other patent offices). The JPOAR 2022 is quite detailed, so…
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In 2021, the Japanese Diet (parliament) passed various amendments to intellectual property law. Two major changes were made, and this month, Prime Minister Kishida’s Cabinet issued executive ordinances to implement the amendments. Here is a summary of the two major…
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On March 17, 2022, the National Diet Library of Japan (NDLJ) published the “NDL Image Bank (NDLイメージバンク)“.[1] At the end of May, the NDLJ publicized this with a tweet on the availability of many old, nostalgic and beautiful works of…
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Although the Japan Patent Office (JPO) generally has one of the world’s fastest patent examination rates (average in 2020: First Action within 10.2 months, total pendency from Request for Examination 15.0 months–see JPO Status Report 2022, p. 4, 47), sometimes…
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If you are hoping to get quick patent results and have Japan in mind, keep in mind that applicants from a number of states are able to have the Japan Patent Office (JPO) examine their PCT international patent applications. Saudi…
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The Japan Patent Office (JPO) is following the Japanese government and much of the world, it seems, to punish Russian economic power. Applicants in the Russian Federation and EAPO party states will need to go through the standard patent examination…
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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Korean litigants keep wrestling over how to put to rest the accounting for past colonial wrongs done to forced laborers. The collateral: intellectual property. As reported last year, the regional Daejeon Court tried to wrest reparations…
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