All Articles
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【Unfair Competition Prevention Act★】A case in which the Tokyo District Court held as follows: the court recognized the implied license granted by the Defendant to the Plaintiff; the court then found that acts by the Defendant, a local public entity, in making or disseminating statements to the effect that “the Plaintiff has produced and used the character named “Chiitan☆” without the Defendant’s permission, thereby infringing the Defendant’s copyright or constituting unfair Competition”, constitutes “the act of making or circulating false allegations” as prescribed in Article 2, Paragraph 1, Item 21 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, among other things; and the court partially upheld the Plaintiff’s claim based on Article 1, Paragraph 1 of the State Redress Act.
Tokyo District Court Decision of February 7, 2025 (Case No. 18479 (Wa) 2021 ˗ Presiding Judge Kokubu) ◆Main text of the case Case Summary The principal action of this case is litigation in which the Plaintiff, who uses the character named “Chiitan☆” (hereinafter referred to as “character Chiitan”), … -
[Patent★] Rescission in a Trial Decision to Maintain “Fulvestrant Formulation” Case: A case in which the Intellectual Property High Court recognized an inventive step, holding that the results of administering a composition identical to the patented invention to a breast cancer mouse model were published in the academic journal “Clinical Cancer Research” but there was no common general technical knowledge of administering that composition directly to humans by intramuscular injection.
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[Patent★] Patent Infringement Litigation seeking injunction, etc. “Lyophilized Preparation Containing High-purity PTH and Method for Producing Same” Case: A case in which the Intellectual Property High Court recognized an inventive step on the ground that it was not permitted to extract a part of a configuration from an embodiment of a cited reference and recognize it as a cited invention; moreover, it was not easily conceivable to consider removing parts other than the part in question.
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[Patent★★] Patent Infringement Litigation “Thermoplastic resin composition, resin-molded article and polarizer-protective film using the same, and method for producing resin-molded article” Case: A case in which the first court case in Japan to recognize fulfillment of the first requirement of the doctrine of equivalents for an invention with numerical limitations; however, a case in which the fifth requirement of the doctrine was denied, and thus infringement under the doctrine of equivalents was denied.
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[Patent★] Patent Administrative Litigation “Agent for Treating Movement Disorders” Case: A case in which the Intellectual Property High Court recognizes novelty and inventive step, holding that, to be recognized as a use invention, it is necessary for a person skilled in the art to understand and recognize the enablement for the target use; merely obtaining promising results at a preliminary testing level with reference-level data is insufficient.
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【Unfair Competition Prevention Act★】A case in which the Intellectual Property High Court dismissed the appeal of the Appellant (first-instance plaintiff: X), holding that the act of the Appellee (first-instance defendant: Y) of using indications in advertisements for the EH-HA0G model hair dryer (Y’s product), including “nanoe MOISTURE+ moisturizes hair 1.9 times better,” “Amount of moisture generated compared to a conventional device: 18 times,” “preventive effect against hair color fading,” “helping to prevent friction damage” (each of Y’s indications) does not fall under Article 2, Paragraph 1, Item 20 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
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[Patent★] Patent Administration Litigation “Lamp and Lighting Device” Case: A case in which the court recognized a support requirement for samples that only marginally failed to meet the effect stated in the specification, based on fitting deviations in measured data, as they were deemed to achieve “roughly the desired” effect.
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[Patent★★] Appeal Court for Patent Infringement “Functional Water” Case: A case in which the court of first instance determined a patented invention to be invalidated for lack of novelty based on a publicly worked invention, but for which the court of appeal accepted the defense regarding the correction of patent raised during the appeal proceedings, and as a result, the patent holder won the case on appeal (the corrected patent was deemed valid).
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【Tort law★】 A case in which the Appellant had been streaming a “shogi” (Japanese chess) tournament for a fee with permission from the Japan Shogi Association, and the Appellee, as an individual viewer, had been reproducing the moves in the shogi tournament on a board and simultaneously streaming the moves for free to shogi fans on YouTube and other platforms. The Osaka High Court reversed the decision of the first instance court, in which the court partially recognized the Appellant’s request for an injunction and damages on the grounds of the Appellee’s defamation of business (Article 2, Paragraph 2, Item 21 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act), holding that the Appellant’s request for Google and others to remove the content on the grounds of copyright infringement with regard to the live streaming videos does not constitute “infringement of [the] business interests” (Article 3 and 4 of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act) of the Appellee
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Patent★ Patent Administrative Litigation “Program” Case: A case in which the Intellectual Property High Court recognized a sub-cited invention as a “higher level concept” and denied the inventive step of a “Disclaimer”