patent

The rainy season began in the middle of June in the Tokai region where our firm, Hattori & Partners is located, and even as I write this blog, it is raining and gloomy outside.
During this season, I always take a folding umbrella with me when I go out, and every time I put a portable umbrella in my bag, I feel that it has become much smaller and lighter than it used to be, which is another advancement.
When I search for “umbrella patent” on the Internet, I see various umbrellas that have been devised from various aspects, and just reading about them makes me excited and want to try them. The plastic umbrellas that abound in the streets are convenient and easy to use, but it is the season to be interested in the latest umbrellas that have been devised with new functions and materials.

Well, the rainy season is finally here! but this year’s rainy season seems to have rushed away. Once confirmed, it is expected to be 13 days, the shortest since statistics began in 1951. That’s a surprise, isn’t it? (Swimmer)

　On October 26, 2020, Japan’s Prime Minister Suga (at that time) declared in his policy speech to the Diet, “We aim to achieve a carbon neutral, decarbonized society by 2050”. This declaration was also extended to the Japan Business Federation. Now, a year and a half after October 2020, I checked the published gazettes to verify whether the number of patent applications related to carbon neutrality surged along with this declaration.
　I searched the Patent Information Platform (J-PlatPat) for the number of gazettes containing the term “carbon neutral” in the specification by year of application, and found the following results (as of May 31, 2022).

　Already in 2001, there were applications with the term “carbon neutral” in the specification. For example, in Japanese Patent Publication 2003-129058, it is stated that “Biomass, in particular, is carbon neutral and should be actively used to replace petroleum, coal, etc., in order to fulfill the international commitments made at the Kyoto Conference on Climate Change Prevention (COP3).” This seems to reflect the growing interest in global warming and climate change triggered by the Kyoto Protocol of December 1997.
　Subsequently, the number of applications describing the term “carbon neutral” increased, but peaked in 2009 (the year COP15 was held in Copenhagen) and has been declining since then, with a leveling off trend since around 2015. Incidentally, the Paris Agreement, which sets reduction targets for each member country, was adopted at COP21 in 2015. As of the end of October to the first half of November 2020, when Prime Minister Suga’s declaration was made as introduced at the beginning of this report, there was no particular upward trend in applications.
　I hope that many carbon neutral related inventions will be created for the future global environment. (Conan)

There is a TV program that introduces the work and life of the people who TV crew visited at the location and revisit them after a few years. Following that method, this time, I will inform you about what happened to the patent for “multicolor penlight” (Japanese patent publication No. 5608827, registered on September 5, 2014) introduced in my blog six years ago (December 16, 2015).

This patent was filed with trial for invalidation of a patent on March 19, 2019, five years after registration on the ground of inventive step. The patentee, TurnON co.,ltd., corrected claims 1 and 2, but the JPO stated that “this invention could easily be come up with by those skilled in the art based on the technical matters and well-known techniques described in Exhibit A1 and Exhibit A2” and on July 28, 2020, an invalidation decision was made. In response, the patentee filed a lawsuit to revoke the trial decision in the Intellectual Property High Court.

On October 6, 2021, the Intellectual Property High Court ruled that the trial decision made by the JPO had an error in finding the subject of the invention of Exhibit No. 1 and decided to revoke the trial decision. As this decision was finalized, the JPO ruled on January 13, 2022 that the Patent was not invalid.
After all the twists and turns, the patent has survived. The “multicolor penlight”, which is the target product of this patent, is also posted on the TurnON website. (Conan)
Link
https://turnon.co.jp/patent/ (Japanese Only)