IP NEWS:SOEI Patent & Law Firm

Japan seeks to become an intellectual property-based nation through strategic creation, protection and exploitation of intellectual property. To attain this goal, it is important to improve the quality and quantity of intellectual property services that support commercialization and trade of intellectual property as well as those that aid in the settlement of disputes.

With these goals in mind, the Japan Patent Office submitted legislation to the National Diet that resulted in the enactment of a complete revision of the Patent Attorney Law in 2000 and partial revision in 2002. These revisions sought to make patent attorneys, who have professional and technical knowledge of intellectual property, the mainstay of the intellectual property based nation.

The amended law significantly expands the authorized range of activities in which patent attorneys may engage. They are now allowed to
    1) conduct dispute resolution through arbitrations outside the court,
    2) represent parties in infringement lawsuits in cooperation with attorney-at-law
Furthermore, the patent attorney examination was amended in an effort to increase the number of patent attorneys and improve their quality. As a result, the number of people who passed the patent attorney examination increased dramatically, as shown in Table 1. And, as shown in Table 2, the total number of registered patent attorneys at the end of each year has also increased.