Earlier this year Professor Tasuku Honjo, Nobel Laureate, publicly criticized his development partner Ono Pharmaceuticals, claiming their renumeration (2.6 billion yen, about US$24 million) was far below what he and other researchers should receive, considering the value of the programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) protein useful for cancer treatment. This public confrontation has received a fair bit of attention, in a country where not rocking the boat is an important cultural value.
Honjo has claimed that inventors-to-be are not being paid fairly and public researchers in Japan are not receiving the funds needed to carry out vital research due to the greed of Ono Pharmaceuticals. Honjo and Ono have been disputing the renumeration for years, and now finally Professor Honjo has threatened to take Ono to court for a higher payment that would go toward funding research for budding researchers.
Hisamitsu Arai, formerly a governmental IP strategy director and once-JPO Commissioner, wrote an August 15 article in SankeiBiz, expressing doubts that such litigation as Honjo’s would be effective in Japan. Arai proceeds to illustrate what he views as problems with the IP litigation environment in Japan in general: it is not attractive to concerned parties, especially those with less money, and it underappreciates IP in the proces. He names some statistics comparing US, Chinese, and Japanese IP litigation:
| Country | Number of Patent Lawsuits in 2017 (approx.) | Maximum Damages Award (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| USA | 4,000 | US$2.5 billion |
| PRC | 16,000 | US$50 million |
| Japan | 200 | US$15 million |
Arai holds that the return on expenses for patent litigation is too low for interested parties to invest in them as a means of enforcing their rights. He notes that often even attorneys’ fees cannot be covered with damages awarded. While many cases are settled in other forms of discussion and arbitration, researchers and inventors who are individuals or belong to small companies are easily overwhelmed by the resourced power of bigger companies (as Arai notes and a previous article describes, forced technology transfers from small contractors to bigger corporations have been reported at alarming rates).
Arai’s urges that Japan needs to treat IP as more valuable and, as part of this, should make patent litigation more appealing as a means of reaching a fair resolution to IP disputes. His suggestions are:
While some lament the litigiousness of courts such as in the United States of America, for Japan, Mr. Arai’s recommendations point in the other direction–that for IP in Japan, more litigation is a sign of greater value placed on IP, and necessary to promote inventiveness. While Japanese people culturally seem to desire to avoid open conflict, perhaps more open confrontation will serve all–inventors and corporations, domestic and foreign.
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Taro Yaguchi
Sources
ARAI, Hisamitsu, “本庶発明”の教訓 知財裁判の改革を急げ []” 1/2,https://www.sankeibiz.jp/macro/news/190815/mca1908150500003-n1.htm, SankeiBiz, August 15, 2019, accessed August 23, 2019.
________, ” 2/2, https://www.sankeibiz.jp/macro/news/190815/mca1908150500003-n2.htm, SankeiBiz, August 15, 2019, accessed August 23, 2019.
