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In the late 1980s an American newspaper reported that by one measure--the number of patents cited by successive inventors--Japan overtook the United States in the number of inventions produced during the 1970s. The reasons for this are not clear, but educational efforts promoting creative behaviors in school children are probably essential and should not be neglected. This document describes two examples of these efforts: (1) the Contest of School Children's Invention and (2) activities in the Invention Clubs for Boys and Girls. The Contest of School Children's Inventions is for primary, middle, and high school students. The Imperial Prize (top honors) was given to primary school students in 1986, 1987, and 1988. The inventions of the Imperial Prize winners for these years are described in detail and a chart listing all the grand prizes from 1986 through 1989 is also provided. The first invention club was opened in 1974 to foster the potential creativity originally possessed by youngsters, to stimulate their imagination, and to help them develop a scientific idea. The largest club (1500 members) is the Kariya Invention Club for Boys situated in the Toyota Science Research Institute. There are 101 clubs in Japan and they cater mainly to students in the third grade of primary school through second grade in middle school. (PR)

This article focuses on five quantitative indicators for patents and scientific literature. These indicators characterize Japan as a technological powerhouse and in an expanding but far less powerful scientific position. Several tables and graphs are provided. (YP)

The U.S. must have the patience and courage to continue to build its research and development infrastructure and to reward innovation in a time of tight federal budgets, pressing international problems, and uncertainty in the private sector about the near-term economic outlook. Trade barriers must be removed also. (MLW)

Natural gas hydrate (NGH) is a significant alternative energy resource in achieving carbon neutrality. The developmental trend and competitive landscape of NGH exploitation and production are crucial for policymakers in government, managers of enterprises, and researchers. This study introduces a novel framework for conducting an in-depth analysis of NGH, integrating patentometrics, technology evolution, and correlation relationships to monitor developmental trends and competitive landscape through patent analysis. The results indicate that China, the USA, and Japan have distinct technology advantages. Current technological developments in the NGH field focus primarily on extraction technologies, equipment, and processing systems. The co-opetition analysis among countries reveals that the most extensive international cooperation network is primarily in Europe and the USA, with national partnerships in Asia concentrated in China and Japan. Institutional cooperation remains limited, primarily within universities in China, while both the USA and Japan foster collaboration between enterprises. The competitive landscapes of key NGH-related technologies among countries and institutions are also examined. This study contributes not only to monitoring the developmental trend and competitive landscape in NGH but also to providing policy recommendations for government and enterprises regarding strategic management and collaborative innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University spinoffs build on strong science, which renders them a significant source of radical innovation. Radical innovation entails uncertainty as there is no market to target, which calls for individuals and organizations that bridge the gap between embryonic inventions and opportunity yet to exist. Recognizing that the commercial success of university spinoffs hinges on the entrepreneurial ecosystems they are embedded in, this study establishes an unbalanced panel (2015–2020) to analyse interrelationships among the key factors in the university spinoff ecosystem: science, innovation, and venture financing. Estimation results reveal that, first, the quality of science increases the probability of university spinoffs acquiring risk money from venture capitalists and business angels. Second, the quality of innovation has a positive effect on venture capital funding. Third, venture capital funding positively affects sales growth of university spinoffs, which corroborates the coach function of entrepreneurial intermediaries that offer startups hands-on support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study investigates whether patents can be a useful signaling tool for the IPO performances among high- and low-tech firms. Literature has provided a wealth of evidence confirming a significant relationship between patent signal and capital-raising success for US and EU venture capital-backed firms and start-ups in specific industries. Therefore, this paper focuses on the IPO firms from a more risk-averse market, Japan, to fill in the gaps in the literature, examining the signaling effect of patent applications prior to initial public offering (IPO) to the amount raised at IPO. Moreover, we examine whether patent applications prior to IPO from high-tech have relatively weaker signaling effects to compare with low-tech IPOs. Using the OLS model for 338 Japanese IPOs listed between 2000 and 2015, the result shows a robust and positive association between the number of patents before an IPO and the amount of cash raised during the IPO. The finding confirms that patents are a reliable signal for IPOs in the Japanese context. Using OECD industry categorization to classify high-tech and low-tech IPOs, our OLS result found that the interaction impact between the high-tech dummy and the quantity of patent applications before IPO is significantly negative to the amount of cash generated at IPO. The findings hold for a new set of high-tech and low-tech firms when we used a new industrial categorization proposed by Thomson Reuters, leading us to conclude that for the Japanese companies that belong to the high-tech industry sector, patenting activities fail to have a positive signal for the IPO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers patent bifurcation in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) from a comparative perspective, contextualizing the proposed framework for the UPC with that of the Japanese Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC). The article highlights that the unique institutional configuration in Europe means that the typical mechanisms that balance the risk of delays from bifurcation in the Japanese system do not easily transfer to a European setting. As the UPC actually comes into force, it is the relationship between institutions in the hierarchy that will be influential in shaping how bifurcation functions rather than the rules themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is three-fold: first, it tests whether inter-industry R&D spillovers are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among R&D intensive firms in Europe, US and Japan; second, it tests whether such a relationship is conditional on their level of absorptive capacity (ACAP); third, it tests whether the acquisition of foreign patents, an additional channel to access external knowledge, trigger high growth episodes among a sub-set of R&D intensive firms. For the empirical analysis, we focus on R&D intensive manufacturing firms observed between 2002 and 2017, located in Europe, US and Japan. The empirical findings support the hypotheses suggesting that: a) inter-industry R&D spillovers are associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes; b) ACAP conditions the relationship between inter-industry R&D spillovers and the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes and c) shares of foreign patents are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among high-tech R&D intensive firms. JEL codes: C41, L25, O33. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship mainly analyzes patent systems from a technological innovation perspective. This article sheds light on the social significance of patenting activity in modern Japan. Examining a set of patents granted in the initial years of a patenting system that was new to Japan gives nuance to understanding how Japanese society underwent industrialization, including regional differences. Challenging the image of the Japanese as passive recipients of foreign technology, this analysis of Japan's early patent system reveals widespread involvement in the patenting system at every level of society across the country. Patentees used patents proactively to create business opportunities, and the patent system offered urban business owners a new ladder to social and economic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents contribute to economic development; therefore, estimations of patent value are significant in measuring their impact on the economy. With this in mind, this article discusses estimations of patent value with the renewal model developed by several economists. Targeted patents are those issued in the United States and Japan from 1990 to 2010. In addition, the study examines patent values for several technology fields and considers which technology field should be the focus for the United States and Japan. Moreover, this article compares estimations based on the renewal model versus those based on other data such as sales, trade prices, or trials and analyzes how close this model's estimations are to the real values. This article's results demonstrate that the renewal model is useful for evaluating patents overall and analyzing technological trends from a patent perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies pointed to evidence that startups and venture capital (VC) companies tended to use different measures to provide signals to outsiders. This study adds to those previous insights by focusing on established firms' patenting behaviors and their effect on the amount of money raised at the initial public offering (IPO). Since technology intensity may differ considerably between high and low-tech companies, our main interest in this paper lies on whether the significance of pre-IPO patenting activities as a predictor of IPO performance also varies between these two industry categories. Using cross-sectional data representing 308 Japanese industrial firms' IPO commitments between 2000 and 2015, we find a robust positive correlation between patent applications and IPO performance. Contrary to the conventional wisdom proposing that high-tech firms with more patenting activities achieve better IPO performance, we show that the signaling power of patenting is stronger for the low-tech companies in our sample: While the high-tech firms do not seem to have significantly benefited from a patent signal, the low-tech firms seem to have attracted external investors more easily due to patenting at the IPO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SAMURAI (NIMS 2022), a directory service of the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) researchers in Japan was launched in 2009 following the development of NIMS institutional repository (Tanifuji et al. 2019). The concept is to synchronize between profile information of researchers and their publications which are self-archived in the repository system. The SAMURAI was renewed in 2017 with interoperable functions with ORCID. SAMURAI supports various links to not only individual articles and patents, but also to databases such as KAKEN (Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research by NII). The service has yielded fully identified authors of journal articles from research members of NIMS by implementing a unique ResearcherID. Through this directory, NIMS is promoting materials research, supporting management of its researchers activities, and introducing NIMS researchers and their work to the public. In this work, we present an application to describe each researcher's output topics automatically from the archived research papers in the repository, by implementing materials science specific natural language processing developed in our study (Dieb et al. 2021) that visualizes the research trend of each SAMURAI researchers. The approach can maximize information absorbance for general audience and fully corresponds to open science policy. A list of publications' digital object identifiers (DOIs DOI 2022) for each researcher was constructed from his profile in SAMURAI. (In SAMURAI, the DOIs are stored in a PostgreSQL database). Using the DOI, recent publications were retrieved from NIMS text data mining platform (TDM-PF) in their XML format which were mainly available from 2003. Representative topic terms from their research publications that are related to materials science and engineering were extracted. We utilize term frequency analysis and automatic extraction for materials names to extract these necessary informative terms. Additionally, domain knowledge resources such as dictionaries were used. Data was preprocessed using noise reduction such as removing general English language stop words and physical units filtering. Such words do not have significance on their own. Word cloud approach was used for visualization (Fig. 1). This work brings us an opportunity to apply our NLP experience to mine information from research papers for public knowledge as a step towards data-driven materials science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese patenting system on biotechnological inventions is unique. In 1979, before the US Supreme court's decision in the Chakrabarti case (1980), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) had issued the "Implementing Guidelines for the Invention of Microorganisms," and microorganism was considered as patentable. Japan lacks case laws. However, we can find cases like the Engineered Mice case. This study paper critically surveys and focuses on the Japanese life science (Gene/DNA) patenting system and its prevailing issues. This paper critically analyzes the current position and practices of the JPO on DNA patenting, including induced pluripotent stem cells as well as CRISPR gene‐editing technique, its challenges, and its potential future courses on this issue; the basis of granting a patent for DNA in Japan; Japanese outlook at ethical (living organisms) aspects of DNA patenting; depository system in Japan; the impacts of the tragedy of anticommons in Japan; "Creative Commons" movement; and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between patenting and publishing at the project level. It uses Japan's Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research database. Japan's Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research is the major funding source for academic researchers in Japan. This database provides information on inputs (budget, period, project members, etc.) and outputs (publications and patents) from each funded research project. The main finding is that patenting has a curvilinear correlation with higher impact, i.e. the number of higher impact publications from funded research projects increases with the number of patents only to a certain amount, and after a peak, it decreases. Our finding implies that if a finding is a relatively significant and marketable breakthrough, researchers who have the possibility of patenting in mind become less likely to share their results openly. Meanwhile, previous studies implicitly assumed that researchers have to make a choice between basic or applied research projects, or for a particular research project choose to make it more applied or basic. Another finding of this study is that the assumption applies to projects. Our findings imply that a heavy emphasis on patenting may reduce the amount of high-quality publishing of scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The recent trend of pharmaceutical companies commercializing new objects as new drugs based on the findings of academic medical researchers, commonly categorizing them as "academic drug discovery" is increasingly gaining popularity in the pharmaceutical industry. Studies state that academic researchers based in universities have lower motivation to apply for patents. However, none of the studies evaluated the existence and extent of the "motivation for patent" in academic researchers, being lower than that of pharmaceutical companies. This study assesses two hypotheses; H1: academic medical researchers are less likely to believe that the patent system is necessary for pharmaceuticals, and thus have diminished interest in the commercialization of their research findings when compared to those in the pharmaceutical industry, H2: apprehension of the raison d'être of the patent system affects positive impressions on patents among academic medical researchers. Methods: From February to March 2020, an anonymous survey was conducted among academic medical researchers, pharmaceutical industry professionals, and IP researchers based in Japan. Overall response rate was 27.4% (192/700). We conducted an analysis of variance for H1 and used the PLS-SEM model for H2 in order to verify the hypotheses. Results: The results confirmed that the mean calculated from the responses of the academic medical researchers was significantly lower than the mean of pharmaceutical company personnel when responses to patenting an emerging technology or drug for the advancement of medicine were analyzed. In addition, we found that a causal relationship between academic medical researchers' understanding of patents and their positive impressions on patents, depending on the degree to which they consider that the patent system is to encourage and promote new inventions. Conclusion: We conclude that a contrasting perception of patents not only exists between academic medical researchers and pharmaceutical company personnel but also it is caused by their apprehension of patents. More efforts to promote the raison d'être of the patent system among academic medical researchers will enable them to view pharmaceutical patents in a more positive light. Through this study, the pertinence to promote academic drug discoveries has been uncovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continual development necessitates innovation. One must discover seeds of innovation and then concentrate resources on these seeds. To do so, one must recognize technology trends and then adopt and execute appropriate innovation strategies. This study used advanced change point detection method to investigate leading indicators that represent changes in technology trends. We examine patents, papers, and newspaper articles in Japan and US for 55 technologies. Results suggest that patents can be more appropriate as leading indicators than either papers or newspapers. This result can contribute to appropriate innovation strategies for planning and updating, and can provide tools that are useful to decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this review is to present an overview of the patent landscape for catalysts used in hydrogenation reactions. Based on patent data extracted from PatBase®, we use predefined patent classifications as well as a keyword‐based search for our analyses. The results indicate that the number of patent families that protect heterogeneous catalysts grows twice as fast as that for their homogeneous counterparts. Furthermore, the data show a shift towards abundant and non‐toxic elements in heterogeneous catalysis, while the noble metals continue to dominate the patent landscape of homogeneous catalysis. A subsequent geographical analysis reveals that the high growth rates in heterogeneous catalysis, especially for nickel and iron, are driven by China. Conversely, patenting activities with regard to homogeneous catalysts mainly take place in the USA, the EU, and Japan. The subsequent keyword‐based search illustrates the continuous industrial relevance of enantioselective hydrogenation and transfer hydrogenation, as well as the rapidly increasing body of patents in hydrodeoxygenation. Setting these finding into context, we present and apply two concepts that are commonly used in patent analyses, namely the technology life cycle and the S‐curve. We conclude that hydrogenation catalysis has not reached its peak economic relevance yet and will continue to spark valuable patents and innovations in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines innovation responses of a panel of Japanese firms to the intensified import competition from China in the period 1995–2005. We build a comprehensive firm‐level dataset linking patents and R&D merged to cross‐industry measures of Chinese import competition. Accounting for a simultaneity bias between innovation and importing and the possible heterogeneous effects across firms, we found that patenting has increased in response to an influx of Chinese imports, but it has adversely affected the quality of innovation, measured by forward citations received. These effects are only observed for globally engaged firms, not for firms focusing on the domestic market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 17 October 2018, the Intellectual Property High Court of Japan (IPHCJ) reversed the decision of the Board of Appeals of the JPO and ruled in favour of restaurant food company that had sought to patent a steak preparation method in a subject-matter eligibility case, Pepper Food Service Co Ltd v Commissioner of Japan Patent Office, Heisei 29 (gyo-ke) 10232. This is an interesting pro-owner decision because the IPHCJ set out a flexible and pro-applicant approach in determining what constitutes eligible statutory subject-matter in terms of business methods. This article will also provide an updated review of the current position of business method patents in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We use dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965–2009. • We find that patent rights have no effect on productivity growth. • We offer an alternative explanation, finding the ECI positive and significant. • Our results lend evidence that patent rights are insufficient for the inducement of productivity. • We argue it is not discovery that increases productivity, but the ability to adapt. Abstract Does the rigorous protection of patents advance or retard economic development? Two decades ago, a new global standard of intellectual property swept across developing and industrialized nations through the implementation of the WTO's TRIPS Agreement. Many years later, the issue of patent rights remains contentious. In this paper, we focus on the effects of patent rights systems on total factor productivity growth, using dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965 to 2009. We show that the effects of stronger or more rigorous patent systems are insignificant for productivity growth in both developing and industrialized countries. Why does the strength of patents appear to have no impact on productivity? Classic economic theory suggests that stronger patent systems incentive innovative output with important spill-over effects for productivity and growth. We offer an alternative explanation using data from the Economic Complexity Index. We find that while patents rights are increasingly irrelevant to productivity, the relationship between economic complexity and productivity is highly positive and significant. Our results are consistent with the contributions of the absorptive capacity theory in that they suggest it is not the discovery and ownership of novel products and processes at the innovative frontier that induces productive growth, but the ability to adapt, replicate and diffuse along the international productive chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses possible reasons as to why Japan has been unsuccessful in pharmaceutical exporting. Japan is the second largest single country market for pharmaceutical products globally but is one of the lowest exporters among the major producer countries. Analysts say the Japanese pharmaceutical industry does not fit the conventional image of Japanese firms as export-oriented. The industry has been domestically oriented. Japan's health policies have served as implicit industrial promotional tools for pharmaceuticals. Industrial policy on patents and capital liberalization restrict foreign competition within Japan and thereby direct the benefits of the domestic market primarily to domestic firms.

This paper evaluates domestic and foreign patent portfolios owned by ten top competitors in Japan on the optical lenses of digital cameras. The objective is to establish an efficient and simple tool to provide an enterprise with the ability to investigate its competing position in order to identify its favorable research and development directions and enhance its patent application strategy. The method is to use three quantitative indicators defined by patent classifications, especially the Japanese patent classification F-term. The indicators represent the technical value of a single invention, between multiple inventions, and all inventions, respectively. Comparison of all aspects of values between Japanese and US patent portfolios are presented on two-dimensional maps. The evaluations show the performance of competitors and obtain the advisements of patent application strategy for an individual company. The results show that Jaccard index based on F-term is a very good tool for calculating the similarity between patents to obtain innovativeness. All indicators show that the thinking of Japanese competitors in R&D and patent filing strategies have high similarity, and there is currently no breakthrough between all competitors. The multi-viewpoint F-term system has resulted in Japanese companies having a large number of patents in a relatively closed environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: It is a crucial function of patent examination to make the patent scope consistent with the contribution of the invention to the state of the art. We assess this function using newly developed data on the scope of Japanese patent applications and grants. We find that the scope was narrowed in two thirds of the grants, both the incidence and the extent of narrowing increased when the applicant chose broad initial scope and decreased when the quality of the applicant's disclosure of prior art was high, and that important applications experienced narrowing more frequently, as one expects from rational examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Official drug prices have been set by the government and revised every other year in Japan. However, most drug prices are revised based on the price divergence rate of official and delivery prices every other year. This paper overviews how the drug price revision process works and reveals factors associated with price cutting, based on the price divergence rate. Methods: Drugs approved as new molecular entities from 2005 to 2014 were selected for price cutting analysis, based on the price divergence rate. Logistic regression assessed the determinants of whether drugs were targeted for price cutting in 2016. Additionally, generic drugs approved from 2009 to 2013 and their off-patent drugs were also analyzed by multiple linear regression analysis to reveal determinants related to price divergence rates. Results: From the targeted on-patent drugs, 90% were targeted for price revision based on the price divergence rate. Of these drugs, 23% were targeted for price cutting. Drugs whose characteristics are larger sales, lower cost/patient, being followers, and being longer in the market were more likely to be targeted for price cutting. The number of generic manufacturers is directly proportional to the price cutting of both generic and off-patent branded drugs. Conclusions: As drug price revision policy is under reconstruction in Japan, the characteristics of drugs targeted for price cutting shown in this study should be considered for establishing drug price revision policies that reflect market conditions adequately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The expiry of patents for costly biologics is creating new momentum on the pharmaceutical market for biosimilars (copies of off-patent biologics) and paving the way for their development. However, little is known about the competitiveness of biosimilars versus their originators and other biologics belonging to the same therapeutic class.Objective: The main goal of this study was to analyse the type of competition generated by the first biosimilars commercialised on key global biologic markets and to grasp their economic model. The secondary goal was to distinguish the main factors likely to influence the uptake of biosimilars on national markets.Methods: To be included in this study, countries had to meet three conditions: the regulatory framework for the development of biosimilars closely resembled that in Europe, biosimilars were marketed in 2014, and the value of the biologics market was >US$3 billion. We analysed granulocyte colony-stimulating factors (GCSFs) and erythropoietins (EPOs) over the period 2007-2014 because these are the two main therapeutic classes that have been 'biosimilarised' and thus have many years of experience available. We assessed market sizes, retail/hospital distribution mixes, incentives for using biosimilars and price discounts for originators versus biosimilars. We conducted a linear regression analysis to assess the relationship between uptakes of biosimilars and the market shares of other biologics.Results: The EU-5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and Japanese GCSF and EPO markets are highly-country-specific. Uptake of biosimilars seems to depend on retail/hospital distribution mixes and on medical practice. Depending on the therapeutic class and the market sector (retail or hospital), biosimilars may compete with first-generation or second-generation products or both. Some incentives implemented to encourage the use of biosimilars had mixed results. Overall, discounts for biosimilars versus originators are not factors that determine global uptake of biosimilars.Conclusion: Unlike generics, there appears to be no unique economic model for biosimilars. Moreover, a new phenomenon occurs with biosimilars: sometimes, they are able to take market shares from subsequent generations of biologics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines time-period and industry heterogeneity of innovation activity in Japan from 1964 to 2006 using patent data and non-consolidated firm data. This study focuses on the following three periods, based on changes of the Japanese patent system, in and non-manufacturing industries: (I) before 1976; (II) 1976–1987; and (III) after 1988. Specifically, for each degree of patent protection in each industry, this study examines how innovation activities are affected by the following determinants found in the innovation literature: size, market competition, and search variety (depth and scope). Empirical results show that when using the entire sample from 1964 to 2006, the size effect on innovation is significantly positive. In addition, the effects of market competition and search variety on innovation are inverse-U. When considering time-period heterogeneity, the effects of size and search variety are similar to the entire period; however, the inverse-U effect of market competition is broken after 1988. On the other hand, when considering industry heterogeneity, the effects of size and search variety are similar to the entire sample, but differ between manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. In addition, the effect of market competition is not statistically significant in either industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focused on how repeat collaborations in projects for inventions affect performance. Repeat collaborations have two contradictory aspects. A positive aspect is team development or experience, and a negative aspect is team degeneration or decline. Since both contradicting phenomena are observed, inventors have a dilemma as to whether they should keep collaborating in a team or not. The dilemma has not previously been quantitatively analyzed. We provide quantitative and extensive analyses of the dilemma in creative projects by using patent data from Japan and the United States. We confirm three predictions to quantitatively validate the existence of the dilemma. The first prediction is that the greater the patent a team achieves, the longer the team will work together. The second prediction is that the impact of consecutive patents decreases after a team makes a remarkable invention, which is measured by the impact of patents. The third prediction is that the expectation of impact with new teams is greater than that with the same teams successful in the past. We find these predictions are validated in patents published in Japan and the United States. On the basis of these three predictions, we can quantitatively validate the dilemma in creative projects. We also propose preventive strategies for degeneration. One is developing technological diversity, and another is developing inventor diversity in teams. We find the two strategies are both effective by validating with the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the actors in the National Innovation System, Public Research Institutes (PRIs) are probably the least studied. Historically, PRIs played an important role in conducting research related to the Japanese government’s missions in defence, space exploration, health care, agriculture and industrial technology. PRIs that aimed to help industry played a significant role during the catch-up period before and after the second World War. However, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as Japanese firms acquired new technological capabilities and crossed technological frontiers with increasing financial resources, the firms’ reliance on PRIs as a source of advanced technology decreased. At present, discussions are underway regarding the role and rationale of PRIs in Japan’s innovation system.In this article, we focus on three large PRIs in Japan—AIST, RIKEN and JAXA—and investigate their role in helping Japan’s industry by examining their patents. We briefly describe their background and history of development, which clarifies their distinctive role in Japan’s innovation systems. We use four measures drawn from patent data (technological value, exclusionary value, expected market value and knowledge spillover) to describe PRI performance. The difference between the PRIs’ patents and those of universities and firms, as well as the impact of the PRIs’ research collaboration with the private sector is analysed. We found that each of the three PRIs has its own identity and is fulfilling its specific role. In addition, we pinpoint problems concerning universities’ patenting activity. Finally, we discuss factors that might affect the research outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We studied the Japan and U.S. patent records of several decades to demonstrate the effect of collaboration on innovation. We found that statistically inventor teams slightly outperform solo inventors while company teams perform equally well as solo companies. By tracking the performance record of individual teams, we found that inventor teams’ performance generally degrades with more repeat collaborations. Though company teams’ performance displays strongly bursty behavior, long-term collaboration does not significantly help innovation. To systematically study the effect of repeat collaboration, we defined the repeat collaboration number of a team as the average number of collaborations over all the teammate pairs. We found that mild repeat collaboration improves the performance of Japanese inventor teams and U.S. company teams. Yet, excessive repeat collaboration does not significantly help innovation at both the inventor and company levels in both countries. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, we performed a detailed regression analysis and the results were consistent with our simple observations. The presented results revealed the intricate effect of collaboration on innovation, which may also be observed in other creative projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews how the criteria for patentability apply to inventions involving human embryonic stem cells in both Australia and Japan, provides an analysis of the current position of the law, and discusses the possible implications in relation to the patenting of human stem cells.It also examines a recent court case, Cancer Voices Australia and another v Myriad Genetics Inc and another, the first judicial decision in Australia to consider the patentability of isolated DNA or Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) sequences that challenged the statutory provisions within the Patents Act 1990 (Cth).This article concludes that Japan is comparatively moderate in granting stem cell patents and has a far less ambiguous approach to stem cell patents than Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses developments in the patent, design and trade mark laws in Japan as of February 2015, particularly the implementation of the Law on the Partial Revision of the Patent Law and Other Laws (Law No. 36). It focuses on the law's provision on post-grant opposition (PGO) system. Also cited are the two co-existing systems under the new patent law, namely, the Opposition (igi) and the Invalidation Appeal (muko shimpan) procedures.

This article analyzes the engagement of Japanese, Korean and Chinese participants in the development of Internet standards at IETF on the basis of four quantitative metrics: attendance, patenting, authorship and leadership. The results are strikingly divergent. Japanese involvement in Internet standardization began early and Japan was, for many years, second only to the U.S. in terms of IETF participation. Though Japanese participation has declined since the early 2000s, Japan remains a major contributor to IETF standardization. Korean involvement in IETF has always been significant, but below the levels of Japan and major European countries. Korean participation in IETF has also declined over the past decade, and has been dominated by one firm, Samsung. Though meaningful Chinese involvement in IETF did not begin until the mid-2000s, it has rapidly expanded in recent years. Today, China is a major player in numerous areas of Internet standardization in terms of three metrics (participation, patenting and leadership), and is rapidly gaining in terms of document authorship as well. Most of China׳s recent IETF involvement can be attributed to Huawei, though other Chinese firms have recently begun to increase their participation in the organization. Thus, contrary to some views that China׳s engagement with standardization is primarily one of indigenous innovation and “catching up”, China׳s experience with IETF demonstrates deliberate and effective engagement with a major Western standards-development organization on its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We trained a classifier to determine whether a technology in a patent document corresponds to a decarbonization (carbon neutral)-related technology or not, using BERT pre-trained on the patent documents and the corpus of decarbonization-related patents we collected. The trained BERT model was also used for macro analysis of published patent gazettes applied after 2000 in Japan and WIPO to visualize the decarbonization-related patent technologies in Japan. By the macro analysis of patents filed in Japan and WIPO, we found that many automotive-related companies are included in decarbonization-related technology score ranking. As for a analysis of patent applications filed in WIPO, we found that Japan is the country with the highest total decarbonization-related technology score in 2019. • It was unclear where (countries and companies) and to what extent decarbonization-related technologies are available. • A deep neural network, called BERT, was used to visualize Japanese and WIPO's decarbonization-related patent technologies. • Many automotive-related companies are included in decarbonization-related technology score ranking in Japan. • Japan is the country with the highest total decarbonization-related technology score among the patents filed with WIPO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The number of patents required to reach percolation decreases over time. • Geographical interplay of the two major groups of applicants increases over time. • Non-European applicants' participation increases over time. • Japan contributes significantly to the network's coherence. • The critical patents are typically introduced by large-sized applicants. We studied the evolution of the European Patent Office (EPO) patents applicants' collaborations network, within a 35 years span of data (1978–2013). Focusing on the Giant Component (GC) formation process over many time-windows, distributed throughout the data timeline, we found that the features governing this phenomenon are indicative of emerging globalization in the applicants' collaborations. The timeline appears to be divided into three regimes, corresponding to three states of the network's evolution. In the early years state, the GC takes long to form and the instant of its creation is easily pinpointed, while it features geographically segregated groups of applicants with technologically similar activities. In contrast, in the late years state, the GC forms quickly, the exact point of its creation is harder to spot, the applicants' activities are more disparate technologically, while their inter-regional collaborations are significantly increased. The middle years are an intermediate state between the two extreme of early and late years. Moreover, we concluded that the critical patents, which induce the GC's formation, are typically introduced by large-sized applicants and also that top patent-producing applicants are likely to submit critical patents, albeit at a lower rate than their overall patent submission. Lastly, we uncovered the crucial role that Japan plays in the network's coherence, through its prominent participation in the GC and the critical patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The emergence and current situation regarding PPHs are described, together with the basic features of these systems. Their benefits in terms of speed, quality and cost are discussed. The three options of (i) the numerous bilateral PPH agreements, (ii) the PCT–PPH, and (iii) the Japanese PPH Mottainai are outlined, together with some statistics, especially in relation to the JPO–USPTO agreements. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]