The Japan Patent Office has updated a Hague-related procedures page to make one practical point much clearer: in procedural documents relating to international design registrations, such as amendments and written opinions filed at the JPO stage, applicants should provide an ‘Application Number’ field and state the Japanese domestic application number. The page indicates an update date of 30 March 2026. On its face, this looks like a minor filing instruction. In practice, however, it affects how law firms, agents and in-house teams map fields, generate forms and align filing logic with the...

The Japan Patent Office has updated its PPH anniversary information, reporting that 56 intellectual property offices had implemented the Patent Prosecution Highway by April 2026. The programme began as a JPO–USPTO pilot in July 2006 and has since become a familiar tool for applicants seeking to reuse positive examination results across jurisdictions.The latest figures also show 29 offices participating in the Global PPH framework, for which JPO serves as secretariat. For applicants managing parallel filings, the practical message is clear: PPH planning should sit closer to the filing and...

The Japan Patent Office has now moved from broad design-policy signalling to something much more useful for applicants: supplementary explanation tied to its Design Examination Guidelines and a first set of practical case examples focused on partial designs and graphical user interfaces under Hague filings. For teams designating Japan, the message is fairly direct. How the claimed portion is isolated, how unclaimed matter is shown, how a GUI sequence is organized, and how much explanatory detail is built into the filing will all matter more than many applicants would like to admit.What...

The Japan Patent Office has released its patent information analysis based on the Green Transformation Technologies Inventory (GXTI), using a common search framework to map global filing trends in GX technologies from 2010 to 2021. The JPO says Japanese applicants remain highly competitive in internationally filed inventions across GX overall, with particular strength in solar photovoltaic power generation, energy-saving buildings and secondary batteries; in secondary batteries, Japanese applicants also led in highly cited international patent families. The point of the exercise is not just...

The market reaction to the Japan Patent Office’s mid-2026 revision of its AI-related invention guidance should not stop at the headline that MLLMs and cross-modal generative AI are now being treated more explicitly. The practical shift is deeper. For applicants, the revision changes how the specification should be written, where the technical contribution needs to be located, and how inventive-step and description arguments are likely to be tested in prosecution.The direction is not surprising. JPO had already added 10 new AI-related examination cases in 2024, and its March 2026 report on...

Japan is starting to give the market a more workable answer on a question that has been hanging over virtual worlds for years: not every 3D digital asset in immersive spaces can safely rely on copyright alone. Virtual garments, architectural structures and other usable-looking assets may still qualify for copyright in some cases, but once the object looks less like pure artistic expression and more like a commercially exploitable design, rights holders may need to lean on the revised Design Act and adjacent enforcement tools instead.The practical significance goes beyond classification. For...

Recent JPO guidance and examination practice mean virtual 3D assets in Japan can no longer be treated as one undifferentiated bucket of “digital content.” Digital fashion items, scene models, tradable spatial decorations and service-linked 3D displays may all live inside virtual environments, but that does not mean they travel through the same legal door. For some assets, copyright may still be the more natural starting point. For others, the more important question is whether the current Design Act framework offers a cleaner and more enforceable route.The real shift is not academic. It...

Recent signals from the JPO and KIPO are best read as a shift in examination practice for AI inventions rather than a dramatic headline reform. No single new “AI patent statute” has suddenly appeared. But when the IP5 keeps deepening comparative materials on AI examination, the JPO expands its support structure for AI-related cases, and KIPO continues to formalize examiner exchange and AI-related examination frameworks, the practical message is hard to miss: an AI invention is less likely to survive on functional ambition alone and more likely to be tested on whether the specification...

After hosting the 19th IP5 Heads of Office Meeting on 12 June, the Japan Patent Office said on 16 June that the five offices had agreed on new directions for AI-focused co-operation and would establish a dedicated working group to carry the discussion forward. Read literally, that announcement is still framework-level. It does not yet amount to a single binding AI patent rulebook shared word for word across Japan, Europe, China, Korea and the United States.What matters for applicants is something narrower and more practical. The JPO already has updated AI case examples, refreshed handbook...

Following the launch of the EU–Japan Intellectual Property Action on 27 April and the May renewal of the JPO–EUIPO memorandum on trade marks and designs, the Japan Patent Office has further clarified how the cooperation is expected to work in cross-border e-commerce cases. The emerging framework centres on faster exchanges of information about suspected trade mark and design infringements, allowing platforms, rights holders and competent authorities in both markets to align evidence and enforcement steps before sellers shift listings or inventory across borders.The mechanism will not...

As of April 1, 2024, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) has created a new position called “AI Advisors,” bringing in external experts to provide patent examiners with technical training and responses to inquiries on AI-related technology. This was not a stand-alone move. The JPO had already launched its Team Supporting AI Examinations in 2021 and expanded the number of AI examination experts from 13 to 39 in October 2023, effectively placing that expertise across examination offices.The real significance lies beyond the headline. As generative AI, data-driven discovery, and materials informatics...