Standard Character Claim
Under the Japanese Trademark Law, application for a trademark consisting of Japanese characters and/or English letters arranged in a single line or a trademark consisting of only Japanese characters and/or English letters can be filed using standard characters. In use, a trademark registered using standard characters can vary the typeface actually used on the goods or its packaging.
However, the Japanese Patent Office developed its standard-character system mainly to simplify trademark filing procedures. The Commissioner of the JPO designated a specific set of Japanese characters, alphabetic symbols and numerals in a specific font for use in filing standard character trademark applications. An additional benefit of the system is that it does not require the applicant to create and attach a trademark sample.
Thus, the standard character format does NOT refer word(s), letter(s), number(s) or any combination thereof, without a claim to any particular font style, size, or color, and without any design elements. Registration of a mark in standard character format may not provide rights as broad as those in the U.S. That is, registration in standard character format may not cover any combination of the word(s), letter(s), number(s) in the mark in any manner of presentation.
If you wish to register a mark with a design element or word(s) or letter(s) having a particular stylized appearance that you wish to protect, the stylized or design format is appropriate. A distinctive stylized format may also be registrable when the standard character format of the same word(s) cannot be registered on its own if the design (rather than the word(s)) of the mark is the source of its distinctiveness.