Trademark Service Japan
The Japanese Patent Office (JPO) has lately published the most recent trademark statistics. In 2008, 119,185 applications were received. This is the lowest number in five years. The number of applications is equivalent to 83% of the volume received during the previous year. 100,243 trade marks were registered which is an increase of 4% compared with 2007.
The Japanese Patent Office (JPO) did not accept geographical names as trademarks until 2006, when the Trademark Act was amended to allow for the registration of regional collective trademarks denoting the geographical origin of products. According to figures recently published, 873 regional trademarks have been registered since. The system seems to be widely unknown among foreign applicants, as only four out of 873 trademarks belong to foreign applicants (”Canada Pork”, “Indian Darjeeling”, “Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee” and “Parma Prosciutto”).
A Japanese regional collective mark of reknown is Kobe beef from the Hyôgo prefecture. Other examples for recently registered regional collective trademarks are Sendai Miso Paste or Yokohama China Town.
Under Japanese law, geographical names can be registered as collective marks for certain goods, if those goods are well known products of a distinct geographical area.
Considering the fact that Japanese consumers attach great importance to the quality and origin of products, there seems to be a lot of unused potential for marketing regional specialty food.
The Japanese Patent Office (JPO) has released its annual Report 2008. The report contains detailed information about trends and statistical data of Japanese IP rights and is certainly worth reading it.
The JPO has released updated statistical data about applications and registrations of intellectual property rights in Japan.
Looking at trademarks, one can see that the number of applications has been steadily increasing over the last ten years (with the exceptions of a sharp downturn in the years 2001 and 2002). In 2007, 143,221 trademark applications were filed (2006: 135,777). The increase of trademark applications could be a result of recent changes in Japanese trademark regulations: Starting from 2007, retail marks have been introduced into the Japanese trademark system. This had probably led many trademark owners to file additional trademarks for retail services in class 35.
The data indicates a slight decrease of trademark registrations (96,531 in 2007, compared to 103,435 in the preceding year), albeit the number is still higher than it was in 2005 with 94,439 registrations.
The WIPO has just published the 2007 statistics on the number of patent filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
The figures are a compliment for Japanese inventors, who were able to maintain their second place position with 17.8% of the total number of PCT applications. Japan’s largest producer of electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., (internationally better known by their brand name Panasonic) published 2,100 applications in 2007 and ranks number 1 of the PCT filing applicants. Matsushita could overtake Philips with 59 applications (Philips Electronics N.V. published 2,041 applications in 2007). Siemens ranks number 3 with 1,644 applications.
Among the 20 top filing companies, there were six Japanese, six U.S. and three German corporations.
