Prospect Future of the Pro-Patent Society

June, 24, 2002
HARAKENZO World Patent & Trademarks
Masaru Kashimoto

  Decreases in technological capabilities have been fundamental issues in the recent Japanese industrial world. Technological gaps with South Korea, Taiwan, and China have been filled year after year; as a result, the situation has reached to the point that further stagnation cannot be allowed. As causes of the technological stagnation, we can refer to; accelerated outflow of technologies as a result of overseas transfers of manufacturing bases for the purposes of cost reductions; lack of engineering development type venture companies; and deterioration of universities’ academic research environment.
  Even though Japan found its way into the world in the late 20th century with the technologies improved during the years of steep economic growth, it has been facing the 21st century with being in the prolonged slump after the collapse of the bubble economy. Conventional approaches have been questioned in various fields, and the Japanese industrial world has not been an exception. The era that products are sold upon manufacturing has passed long before, and China or Taiwan today has manufactured products at un-competitively low cost; therefore, now it is required to manufacture a product creative and having high added values. The movement of manufacturing such products has already risen in the Japanese industrial world; however, as seen in the floods of patent infringing products in China, even if technologically advanced products are manufactured, proper protections against infringements have not been sufficiently provided.
  Under such situation, pro-patent doctrine has finally start to go in to full swing in Japan as seen in preparations of intellectual property-related legislation or in the rise of the “Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters,” at which Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi presides. In the United States, where the pro-patent reforms have been realized earlier, such companies as ones making enormous profits by patent royalties or others trading patents rather than manufacturing products have appeared. Taking advantages of patents, those U.S companies charge foreign companies, including Japanese ones, with big royalties, with which some of them comply while others fight against.
  Japanese companies have been said that they are not interested in exercising rights while they are enthusiastic over acquiring patents; however, it will become inevitable to direct their attention to the exercise of rights in a prospective pro-patent society. Once a society becomes pro-patent, the need to make cross license agreement upon any interoperable patents and to unhesitatingly file a lawsuit against infringement will become more obvious. Consequently, companies have to approach to patents more seriously.
  On the other hand, as concerns general populace, they are apathetic about intellectual property rights, far from the pro-patent issues. The Patent Office and the Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation enlighten people about the intellectual property through public relations activities and actually yield certain results, yet still only few people may feel something familiar to the intellectual property rights. As the Council for Science and Technology Policy (chairperson: Prime minister Junichiro Koizumi) proposes the establishment of a graduate school specializing in the intellectual property rights, cultivation of experts is important. Yet, at the same, teaching the value of protecting an idea or originality and ingenuity to citizens by incorporating the issues of the intellectual property into a general education is equally effective in promoting the pro-patent society and developing the nation built on the intellectual property.
  I hope that the pro-patent issues become universally prevalent rather than concern only those engaging in the intellectual property rights, that a society where everyone esteems the intellectual property rights is built, and that the patent becomes “property” in the real sense of the term.