Following reports of a considered revision to the Japanese Patent Act to enable “discovery” of data on patent infringement earlier this year, the proposal has been officially made. A patent attorney’s informational meeting on July 23, 2019, gave explanation. The…
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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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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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The Japanese government’s Subcommittee on the Patent Act System has been working on revisions to the patent litigation system in Japan since October last year. The Japanese patent system does not have a requirement like the United States power of…
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On January 17, 2019, the Japanese Patent Attorney’s Association held a press conference in which presenter Seiji Matsuda pointed out the impact of the now-effective modified Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement (often called TPP-11) on intellectual property. The major changes…
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In spring 2018, Japan implemented a Revision to Unfair Competition Prevention Act that includes a change to the disclosure grace period (exception to lack of novelty of invention period) for filers of Japanese patent, utility model, or industrial design applications….
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Keisen Associates generally files an information disclosure (similar to the Information Disclosure Statement, or IDS, in United States patent applications) of known related prior art for Japan patent applications. This is not necessarily what all Japanese patent law firms practice,…
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If you are reading this, you probably are one of the many people blessed with little or no visual impairment. However, there are many people who are visually disabled or impaired. For them, the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to…
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As reported recently, Japanese leaders are giving greater attention to industrial designs and their usefulness to businesses for promoting the image and attractiveness of products and services. The Japan Patent Office is preparing a proposal for revision of the Design…
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News about intellectual property litigation comes at us frequently. Of these, the significant cases can dramatically alter the course of an enterprise, so firms may want to verify the facts about a reported litigation. For example, has an infringement trial…
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