August 2, 2019 [ IP News-Amendment of Acts ]
Promulgation of The Act on the Partial Revision of the Patent Act and Other Acts (Act No. 3 of May 17, 2019)

“The Bill for the Act on the Partial Revision of the Patent Act and other Acts”, which was approved by the Cabinet on March 1, 2019, was passed into law on May 10, 2019, and promulgated as Act No. 3 on May 17, 2019.
This revision, with the exception of certain provisions, takes effect on the day specified by Cabinet Order not exceeding one year from the date of promulgation (May 17, 2019).
The main contents of the revision are as follows.

◆ Outline of revision of the Act
<1> Partial revision of Patent Act
1.1 Creation of a system to conduct an on-site examination by a fair and neutral expert (inspection)
A system is created in which, when there is a possibility of infringement of patent rights, a fair and neutral expert enters the premises of the alleged infringer, conducts investigations necessary to prove infringement of the patent rights, and submits a report to the court.
1.2 Review of method for calculating damages
(i) Under the current law, upon calculating damages based on the quantity of products transferred by the infringer, the amount corresponding to the transferred quantity beyond the production capacity of the rights-holder is deducted from the calculation of the damages. However, under the revised law, the amount equivalent to the license fee, for the transferred quantity beyond the production capacity of the rights-holder, can be added to the damages.
(ii) It shall be clearly stated that, in the calculation of damages based on the license fee, the amount that would be determined if negotiated on the assumption that there was an infringement of the patent rights could be taken into account.
※ As for <1.2>, the same amendments are made to the Utility Model Act, Design Act and Trademark Act.

<2> Partial revision of Design Act
2.1 Enhancing the scope of protection
Images not recorded or displayed on articles, and building exterior and interior designs are newly protected by the Design Act.
2.2 Review of related design system
To protect designs continuously developed to one consistent concept,
(i) the applicable period of an application for the related design is extended from “until the date before issuance of the registration gazette of the design (approximately 8 months)” to “within 10 years from the application date of the design”, and
(ii) registration of design(s) similar only to related design(s) is accepted.
2.3 Change to protection period for design rights
The protection period is extended from "20 years from the registration date" to "25 years from the application date".
2.4 Simplified application procedure for design registration
(i) Multiple designs can be bundled into a single application.
(ii) Article classification is eliminated in order to allow flexible description of the name of articles.
(5) Indirect infringement *enhancement of regulations
*A system that regards preliminary and contributory actions that are extremely likely to trigger infringement as infringement
By defining subjective elements such as "knowing that the articles, etc. will be used for the implementation of the design", it becomes possible to control The act of dividing infringing articles into component parts and manufacturing/importing in order to avoid crackdown will be controlled by defining subjective elements such as "knowing that the articles, etc. will be used for the implementation of the design".

<3> Others
Measures will be taken, such as allowing public interest bodies (local governments, universities, etc.) to license their widely recognized trademarks .

The rules will be notified as soon as they become clear.
For detailed information, check the JPO website.
https://www.jpo.go.jp/e/system/laws/rule/hokaisei/tokkyohoutou_kaiei_20190517.html