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January 16, 2005
Japanese patent attorneys to acquire more power
The Japanese Patent Office has decided to revise the Patent Attorneys Law to allow patent attorneys to represent clients in out-of-court disputes over copyrights for music, movies and other works. Such out-of-court dispute resolution would be in the format of arbitration and mediation proceedings. The move by the JPO comes as the number of copyright disputes is sky-rocketing in Japan.
“Intellectual property cases are expected to increase because of the diffusion of music and game software in addition to publications, which already have a large number of cases. The office intends to solve these cases smoothly and increase convenience for individuals and companies by opening up activities to patent attorneys.”
It will be interesting to see if the final regulations include mandatory arbitration and mediation training, without which, it is hard to imagine the new regulations will have much of an impact.
Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 01:17 PM.
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