Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group Report 2024（Summary）is released.

The Trial and Appeal Department of the JPO holds the “Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group” annually, in which trial and appeal practitioners from the different positions such as IP practitioners from industries, patent attorneys, attorneys, judges (as an observer), administrative judges gather to conduct studies on trial and appeal decisions and court decisions, and the results of the studies are widely disseminated by publishing the English report. In the fiscal year of 2024, all meetings were held face-to-face for the first time in several years (some were hybrid meetings), and we had deeper and more active discussions.

At this fiscal year’s Study Group, the members discussed the following topics; as for the four patent fields (Machinery, Chemistry 1, Chemistry 2, and Electricity), the design field and the trademark field, (1) general issues (publicly worked inventions and determination of inventive step; determination of inventive step for parameter and numerical limitation inventions; acceptability of supplemental results submitted after filing in determination of inventive step; eligibility for patent (mental activities of humans, arbitrary arrangements); determination of similarity between designs (determining entity); Trademark Act, Article 4(1)(xi) determination of similarity of composite trademark) 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 six fields.

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.

• Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group Report 2024 (Summary) （PDF:4,865KB）
  

The English translation of the summary of the reports is available at Trial and Appeal Practitioner Study Group Report | Japan Patent Office (jpo.go.jp).

[Last updated 21 March 2025]