Japan Patent Office: Aiming high

It is fitting that a nation known as the ‘land of the rising sun’ has produced 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 office is striving to become a global leader. Speaking to WIPR, Hitoshi Ito, commissioner of the Japan Patent Office (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 office, since last year, has ensured that the time taken between an applicant filing a patent and the JPO starting a first 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 offices 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 Office (USPTO). At the UK Intellectual Property Office, the process takes around 18 months.

Ito says that in order to enhance the quality of patent examination, the office 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.”

Numbers game

In 2013—the latest year for which statistics are available—the JPO received more than 328,000 patent applications and just over 117,000 trademark applications. The 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 five times as many as at the European Patent Office (EPO).

According to the 2013 filing figures, the electric machine, electric device, and electric energy sectors accounted for the most patents, while the top five patent applicants included some familiar names: Panasonic, Canon, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Toshiba.

“Japan will continue to promote the GPPH in order to enhance the usability of the PPH framework for applicants around the world.”

As well as the heavy focus on patents, Ito is also keen on improving his office’s system for handling trademarks and designs. He refers to the JPO’s 2013 Collective Examinations for IP Portfolios Supporting Business Activities system as a case in point, under which examiners join forces to assess multiple applications together.

“This 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.

“In the past, examiners in each field—for example, a design examiner and a trademark examiner—conducted their examinations individually. In ‘collective examinations’, a cross-section of examiners in a variety of fields collaborate with each other.”

The office’s examination team consists of four patent and design departments, and a trademark and customer relations department.

Globalisation

On his second aim—globalisation—Ito discusses the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH), which the JPO launched early last year.

The GPPH, which initially included 17 IP offices, allows applicants to request accelerated patent examination at any of the offices involved, provided their claims have been previously granted by any of the other offices.

“It is becoming more and more important to increase cooperation between Japan, China and Korea.”

It is an extension of the PPH programme, which has the same principle but in which just two IP offices usually join forces. Under the first PPH, launched in 2006, the JPO teamed up with the USPTO.

Since the launch of the GPPH, the addition of Singapore and Austria has taken the number of participating countries to 19.

“Japan will continue to promote the GPPH in order to enhance the usability of the PPH framework for applicants around the world,”
Ito says.

Alongside the GPPH programme, Japan is a member of the IP5 group—a name given to the JPO, USPTO, EPO, Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)—and has also enhanced its relations with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has 10 members.

As Ito explains, both collaborations provide opportunities for discussions on harmonisation and globalisation.

He says the JPO has been “actively leading” discussions on initiatives aimed at increasing harmonisation at international meetings, including at the World Intellectual Property Organization, IP5 meetings and trilateral meetings between Japan, China and South Korea.

“The speed of development in Asian countries is remarkable,” Ito says, revealing that “in recent years” the total number of applications for patents, trademarks and designs filed at the JPO, KIPO and SIPO has accounted for more than half of the total filed worldwide across all forms of IP.

“It is becoming more and more important to increase cooperation between Japan, China and Korea,” he says, adding that the relationship between the three has been strengthened since the 1990s.

The annual Trilateral Policy Dialogue Meeting has been held every year since 2001 and, in recent years, the three offices have analysed details of examinations, and trial and appeal practices at the offices, in an attempt to assess the commonalities and differences of laws, regulations and examination guidelines.

“Through these cooperative activities, we would like to enhance the practical capabilities of examiners at the JPO, KIPO and SIPO in order to achieve international harmonisation of examination practices,” Ito explains.

The JPO has also established cooperative relationships with developing and emerging countries in Asia, Africa, and Central and Latin America.

This has involved sending experts including examiners to these countries, receiving trainees from IP offices or the private sector in the nations, and providing support to improve their IP systems by holding seminars and workshops.

Keeping up to speed

Ito clearly has a plan but what was it that made globalisation one of his priorities?

He tells WIPR that during the last ten years the world economy has changed at an unprecedented speed through the “digital revolution and the globalisation of markets”, and as a result of innovation in the information and communications technology sectors.

“At a time when economic competition has greatly changed, I often ask myself whether our IP system has sufficiently kept up with so many changes that have been happening around the world.

“As JPO commissioner, I acknowledge that it is my mission to listen carefully to the opinions of industry and users of the system, as well as to execute our initiatives accordingly,” he says.

The JPO’s two aims are commendable and clearly crucial to IP development. Launching initiatives including the GPPH and increasing cooperation with neighbouring countries and those further afield will help to create a degree of harmonisation. While cutting examination times is a necessity, the challenge will be to ensure that with a focus on speed, the quality of work does not suffer as a consequence.

One thing does remain certain: with annual IP applications in the hundreds of thousands, and JPO examiners having been used to assessing more patents than some of their counterparts, it seems it could be a while before the sun sets on innovation and IP in Japan.