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Food and Medical Support Station

Many developed countries, including Japan, are experiencing declining birthrates and aging populations. In an aging society with a declining birthrate, technologies related to medical care, nursing care, food, and pharmaceuticals will become increasingly important. The "Food x Medical Support Office" is a group of experts who specialize in intellectual property rights in these technical fields. We sincerely hope that this site will be useful to everyone who is working day and night to make a society with a declining birthrate and an aging population affluent.

Specifically, our support office specializes in the following areas:

(1)Medical care, nursing care (wearable devices, IoT, nursing care robots, etc.)
(2)Food (functional foods, etc.)
(3) Pharmaceutical products

 

In the medical and nursing care fields, it is necessary to make full use of a wide range of fundamental technologies such as IoT and mechanical engineering.

In the food field, there are revisions to patent examination standards regarding food uses, and competition to acquire rights will intensify from now on. In particular, for functional foods, it is essential to utilize intellectual property rights in order to make more effective use of the functional labeling system and expand the market.

In the pharmaceutical field, individual products, such as blockbusters, can have extremely high value, and each patent application strategy must be carefully designed to protect each product with a small number of patents.

 

In addition, brand strategies are important in these fields to gain consumer trust, and in the case of food products, design strategies such as protecting the shape and packaging with design rights are also required.

In this way, the fields of medicine, nursing care, food, and pharmaceuticals require sophisticated and complex intellectual property strategies. At our support office, we utilize our high level of expertise and extensive experience both domestically and internationally to meet your needs. If you have any concerns regarding domestic or international intellectual property activities related to medical care or food, please contact our support office.

 

Features of the Food x Medical Support Office

We bring together versatile staff with extensive experience in chemistry, biotechnology, information technology such as IoT, machinery such as robots, and basic technology essential to fields such as medical care and food.
We deal with all intellectual property laws, including not only patent law, but also design law, trademark law, unfair competition prevention law, and seed and seed law.
We are also fully prepared for foreign countries.
We also provide instructors for seminars, in-house study sessions, etc.

Medical equipment commercialization support service

We support the commercialization of medical devices and instruments from both patenting and commercialization aspects.

Step 1: Patentability and marketization consideration service

We provide reports on patentability and marketability.

Report content

 1. Patentability assessment
  -Results of prior art search

 2. Simple marketability study
  -Interview with the inventor
  - Search for related statistics (may not be available)

How to use

 -As a material for intellectual property personnel to make decisions regarding applications.
 - As meeting materials with other departments and co-developers.

Step 2: Detailed market research service

A research company affiliated with our firm conducts detailed market research.

Report content

 Market research results

How to use

 - After Step 1, immediately perform Step 2 to use it as a basis for making an application decision.
 -As a basis for making decisions when filing a request for examination after filing a patent application.

 

About food use inventions

A use invention is an invention based on (i) the discovery of an unknown attribute of a certain object, and (ii) the discovery that this attribute makes the object suitable for a new use (Examination Guidelines, Part III, Chapter 2, Section 4, 3.1.2). In Japan, use inventions for food products have been granted patents since April 2016.
On the other hand, the treatment of use inventions differs depending on the country, and some countries do not recognize use inventions. Therefore, the following is a summary of how food use inventions are handled in major countries other than Japan.
For the sake of simplicity, here, we will use the term ``invention of use'' to mean that when a product or composition is not novel and only the use is different from the prior art, novelty can be recognized based on the difference only in the use. Expressed as such.

米 国

Use inventions are not permitted (MPEP 2111. I). On the other hand, its useExpressed in method (e.g., method of treatment) claims(MPEP 2112.02. II).

Europe (including UK)

For medicines, use inventions (first medical use invention, second medical use invention) are recognized (Examination Manual Part G, Chapter II, 4.2, Examination Manual, Part G, Chapter VI, 7.1). Therefore,If the food is used for medicine, a use invention will be recognized.

Chugoku

Use inventions are not permitted (Examination Guidelines Part 2 Chapter 3 3.2.5(2)). In addition, inventions of methods that fall under medical practice cannot be patented (Article 25(3) of the Patent Law).
On the other hand, regarding known foods used for new medical purposes,Novelty is recognized by making it a Swiss-type claim(Examination Guidelines Part 2 Chapter 10 4.5.2).

South Korea

Only for health functional foods,A use invention is recognized (Examination Guidelines Part 9 Chapter 3 2.2 ①).
According to the review guidelines, ``health functional foods'' are defined as foods that are manufactured and processed in various forms to provide useful functionality to the human body. Therefore, it is sufficient to describe its use in terms of what kind of useful function it has on the human body (Examination Guidelines Part 9 Chapter 3 2.2 ③).

Taiwan

Use inventions are not permitted (Examination Guidelines Part 2 Chapter 3 2.5.2). In addition, inventions of methods that fall under medical practice cannot be patented (Article 24, Section 2 of the Patent Law).
On the other hand, as in the case of medicine,Novelty is recognized by making it a Swiss-type claim(Examination Guidelines Part 2 Chapter 1 2.5.5).

Summary of claims allowed for food use inventions in each country

  Japan 米 国 Europe (including UK) Chugoku South Korea Taiwan
complaints about things Possible Improper Possible (for medical use only) Improper Possible Improper
method claims Improper Possible Improper Improper Improper Improper
swiss type claim - - - Possible - Possible

<Reference materials>

・Hiroshi Kato, Introduction of food use inventions and its impact - Regarding the April 2016 revision of examination standards (Patent Office) -, Research Technology Plan Vol. 4, No. 31/3, 4, 2016-283

・Patent Office First Examination Department Coordination Division Examination Standards Office, Points of Patent Examination Standards, Japan Patent Office HP

・Emi Hamada, Guidelines for use-limited and numerically-limited inventions and product-by-process claims in Japan, the United States, Europe, and China, IPR62, 2016, 1-8

・Noriaki Fukuyama, Revision of examination standards for food use inventions, tokugikon, 2016.9.15. no.282

・Japan Patent Office, Reference 5-1, Comparison with laws and examination standards of each country ~About food use inventions~

・Intellectual Property Research Institute, General Incorporated Foundation, Research report on how food should be protected based on the scope of validity of patent rights for use inventions, FY27 Japan Patent Office Industrial Property Rights System Problem Research Report

 

Food x medical field intellectual property information

*Only a summary of the material is posted. For short documents, only the title is written.
*If you are interested in the content, please contact our Tokyo headquarters by email.
*Please see the end of this page for the address.

Link

-Patent Examination Handbook Page
   The appendix contains many examples that may be helpful.
   The following cases are related to the "Examination Guidelines for Use Inventions of Food" that were applied from April 2016, 4.
・Annex A “1. Collection of case studies regarding description requirements (Article 36 of the Patent Act)” Case XNUMX
・Appendix A “4. Collection of cases related to novelty (Article 29, Paragraph 1 of the Patent Act)” Cases XNUMX to XNUMX
- Annex A “5. Collection of cases regarding inventive step (Article 29, Paragraph 2 of the Patent Act)” Cases XNUMX to XNUMX
 *The reference material "Cases related to IoT-related technologies" at the end of the above page introduces cases related to the medical and nursing care fields.
・Case 29, 37, 38

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