I
t is fi tting that a nation known as the ‘land of
several companies whose inventions have
signalled a new dawn in technology. Honda, Sony, Canon and Toyota are just some of the biggest and most recognisable brands to have emerged from Japan. From high speed bullet trains to personalised house robots and electronic toilets, the nation is synonymous with modernism and a drive to be at the forefront of today’s technological world. It comes as no surprise, then, that the
country’s intellectual property offi ce is striving to become a global leader. Speaking to WIPR, Hitoshi Ito, commissioner of the Japan Patent Offi ce (JPO), says his aims in the coming years are to “enhance the quality while maintaining accelerated speed of
examination, and
promoting globalisation”. Ito says he wants the JPO to boast the world’s
“fastest and highest quality” process for patent examination as well as creating an IP system that takes account of globalisation. He explains that the offi ce, since last year,
has ensured that the time taken between an applicant fi ling a patent and the JPO starting a fi rst action is only 11 months, and now it is aiming to grant patents within 14 months or less on average. If successful, this would make the JPO among
the quickest offi ces in the world for assessing and granting patents. In contrast, US patent applications currently take around 24 months to be assessed and granted on average, according to the US Patent and Trademark Offi ce (USPTO). At
the UK Intellectual Property Offi ce, the
process takes around 18 months. Ito says that in order to enhance the quality of
patent examination, the offi ce has published the Quality Policy, a report that sets out guidelines for meeting that goal. He adds: “In addition, the external expert
committee was established last year to review and evaluate the current state of, and the systems for, quality management of the examination procedures.”
the rising sun’ has produced
Aiming
As one of the so-called IP5, the Japan the world. WIPR Hitoshi Ito
In 2013—the latest year for which statistics are available—the JPO received more than 328,000 patent
applications Collective and just over 117,000
trademark applications. T e USPTO, in contrast, received 615,243 patent applications, although its population is more than double that of Japan. Ito says that year-on-year from 2004 to 2012, JPO examiners assessed three times as many patent applications as those at the USPTO and fi ve times as many as at the European Patent Offi ce (EPO). According to the 2013 fi ling fi gures, the
electric machine, electric device, and electric energy sectors accounted for the most patents, while the top fi ve patent applicants included some familiar names: Panasonic, Canon, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Toshiba. As well as the heavy focus on patents, Ito is
also keen on improving his offi ce’s system for handling trademarks and designs. He refers to the JPO’s 2013
Examinations for IP Portfolios
Supporting Business Activities system as a case in point, under which examiners join forces to assess multiple applications together. “T is responds to users who want to obtain
multiple IP rights that are related to each other in a timely manner,” Ito says. “For example, companies developing electric
vehicles generally need to acquire multiple rights, including patent rights for several vehicle components, designs of their vehicle bodies and trademarks for the logo and name.
32
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