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...
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...
The Japan Patent Office (JPO) updated its examination guidance on 9 September 2026 for international design applications designating Japan under the Hague System, with particular attention to graphical user interfaces, AR/VR spatial interfaces and 3D digital assets. The update seeks to standardise how changing interface states are represented, including the use of sequential views for dynamic GUIs, while reducing the need to amend certain environmental lines that do not form part of the core claimed design.Continue reading with a member accountRegister free to unlock full analysis and...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 signals from the JPO and Korea's Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP, formerly 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 MOIP 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...
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...
On 30 July 2026, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) issued the final version of its revised design examination guidelines for virtual spaces and metaverse-related subject matter. The guidance clarifies how purely digital UI/UX, virtual buildings and digital assets such as in-game skins or virtual furniture may qualify as independent designs even when they are not tied to a physical product.The update also gives Hague System applicants designating Japan more detailed filing instructions, including drawing standards for dynamic views and the electronic format for an “environment separation...
On 24 March 2026, Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court overturned the JPO’s earlier decision invalidating Broad Institute CRISPR-Cas9 patent claims. The dispute centred on whether priority from the underlying applications had been validly transferred before the PCT filing. The court held that status as a “successor in title” under Article 4A(1) of the Paris Convention does not invariably depend on objective written evidence such as a formal deed of assignment; a shared intention between transferor and transferee to transfer the priority right before the PCT filing can be sufficient.The...
On 11 August 2026, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) released its first benchmark set of design registrations for metaverse and other virtual-space assets following the new rules that took effect at the end of July. The examples cover standalone virtual UI/UX, digital fashion and virtual architecture, including several designs that reached Japan through international applications under the Hague System.The practical value lies in the filing detail. The published cases show how applicants have presented multiple views, dynamic changes and statements explaining that a design is not tied to a...
