استراتژی مالکیت معنوی ژاپن

Initiated by a speech by the Japanese Prime Minister in 2002, an improved strategy for the creation, protection and use of intellectual property in the Japanese economy has rapidly evolved. The author outlines the major elements and achievements of the new strategy under five categories: – Creativity and inventiveness (e.g. facilitating technology transfer from universities to the private sector). – Protection (e.g. trilateral sharing of search and examination results, speedier examination, and the establishment of an IP high court). – Exploitation (e.g. widening the range of organisations allowed to assist SMEs). – Contents (mainly aspects of IP in the movie industry). – Cultivating human resources (e.g. increased emphasis on IP education in universities). Future work, in phase 2 through to 2009, in making Japan an ‘IP Rich Country’, will concentrate on building on these changes to integrate IP more fully into business growth.

The situation in relation to IP has changed considerably in Japan in the last two to three years and even the Government has hurried to implement measures to realize the ‘IP Rich Country’ policy. The IP strategy headquarters has achieved a basic reform of the IP system in Japan in the last three years (2003–2005, Phase 1) and those achievements have been acknowledged by the House, industry and the mass media. Henceforth, we plan to tie these basic system reforms in with business growth and increased employment. So in the next three years (2006–2009) in Phase 2 we plan to build on the achievements of Phase 1 to make Japan a world leading IP Rich Country as measured in science, technology and macroeconomic terms (see Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) We plan to implement this revolution in a timely fashion without detriment to previous achievements and all organisations in Japan need to pull together to achieve this aim.