Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group Report

The Trial and Appeal Department of the JPO convenes a study group every year, called the "Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group." The study group is comprised of practitioners including administrative judges, employees of the intellectual property department in companies, patent attorneys and lawyers. In addition, judges of the Intellectual Property High Court and the Tokyo District Court have been participated in the study group as observers since 2016. Each year's study group deliberates on trial/appeal and court decisions in actual cases. The results of the study are consolidated into a report in Japanese, available at the JPO website (in Japanese).

The English translation of the summary of the reports is available as below.

Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group Report 2022 (Summary) （PDF:1,141KB）

In the fiscal year of 2022, we had deeper and more active discussions by increasing the number of meetings by fields and taking advantage of hybrid meetings.

At this fiscal year’s Study Group, the members discussed (1)general issues (support requirements for numerical limitation inventions; clarity requirements; intrinsic properties in determining novelty; determination of inventive step when different features are matters related to a business method, or a game rule and arrangement; and determination of similarity of combined trademarks) and (2)individual case (selected from court precedents considered important for trial and appeal practices and trial/appeal decisions subject to the court precedents) in each of five fields（4 patent fields: Machinery, General Chemistry, Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, and Electricity, and Trademark）.

We would be grateful if you read the results of discussions by users of the Japanese trial and appeal system and find it helpful to understand the trial and appeal practices in Japan.