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   YKI Trademarks Japan

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YKI Trademarks Japan
September 1, 2004 Issue

In this Issue:

1.  JPO Activities
	
2.  After the Uproar

(c) 2004 YKI Patent Attorneys

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JPO Activities

	In this issue, we will provide tips concerning design applications.  

	According to certain news reports, the Japan Patent Office
	(JPO) recently announced that it would adopt a new system
	which allows drastic reduction of the examination period for
	design applications as of 2005.  While at present it takes
	about 8 months on average for the prosecution of a design
	application from the start of examination until registration,
	when a company who has filed a design application reports to
	the JPO that a counterfeit of the applied design has been
	discovered, the JPO will examine the case preferentially and
	issue a notice within one month.  Under the current situation,
	where companies usually start selling their promising products
	before obtaining design rights for them, which results in the
	appearance of counterfeit products on the market only a few
	months later, such an infringement of intellectual property
	rights is left uncontrolled for as long as several months
	after the sales of these products.  Although the Japan Patent
	Office has been trying to shorten the examination period for
	design applications as a whole, with the number of design
	applications filed per year reaching 40,000 it has recognized
	the limits of the current system.  With the new system which
	prioritizes the applications to be examined, the Japan Patent
	Office hopes to minimize damages incurred by applicants due to
	counterfeit products.

The Hanshin Yusho Mark:
	After the Uproar

	Do you remember the uproar caused by the mark "Hanshin Yusho"?
	The Hanshin Tigers are a Japanese professional baseball team
	based in the Osaka and Kobe (Hanshin) region of Japan, and
	they beat the New York Yankees in the opening game of the MBL
	held in Japan this year. (Note that although the Hanshin
	Tigers won the pennant last year, the team is not doing
	anywhere near so well this year.)

In 2001, an individual filed a trademark application including the
characters "Hanshin Yusho" and the application was registered.  When,
in the hope of capturing its first League pennant in eighteen years
last year, the team filed their own application for a character mark
"Hanshin Yusho", the team's application was rejected based on the
existence of the registered mark.  This course of events aroused the
attention of the media and annoyed the team.  The team seems to have
been very upset with this experience and has become extremely
sensitive to trademark matters.  Please also note that the Hanshin
Tigers is commonly abbreviated to both "Hanshin" and "Tigers".

At this time, the Tigers complained about a registered trademark
"TIGER" owned by the Tiger Corporation, a manufacturer of electric
cooking ware.  More specifically, the team argued that the mark
"TIGER" is similar to the famous abbreviation "Tigers" of the Hanshin
Tigers and therefore causes confusion.

However, Tiger Corporation is a time-honored firm established in 1923,
and their trademark "TIGER" is very famous in Japan.  Therefore, not
only legal professionals but also ordinary people mostly regarded this
act by the Hanshin Tigers to be a little drastic.

Actually, the Japan Patent Office did not accept the above argument of
the Tigers, stating that the mark "TIGER" composed of uppercase
characters owned by the Tiger Corporation should be distinguished from
"Tigers" composed of a combination of uppercase and lowercase
characters of the Hanshin Tigers.

Thereafter, Tiger Corporation filed a mark "TIGERS", which was
rejected because the mark would recall the Hanshin Tigers.  Currently,
the mark "TIGER" in a singular form which belongs to Tiger Corporation
is differentiated from "Tigers" in plural form which belongs to the
Hanshin Tigers.

We believe that this incident must have been a nuisance to Tiger
Corporation who continued to use the mark "TIGER" for more than 80
years.  However, it seems that this incident impressed upon the
Japanese people the fact that the Hanshin Tigers are very sensitive to
trademark matters.  In this sense, the tactics of the Hanshin Tigers
may have been successful.

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Please send any questions or comments to:
newsletter@yki.jp
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YKI Patent Attorneys
http://www.yki.jp

1-34-12 Kichijoji Honcho
Musashino-shi, Tokyo
180-0004 Japan

Tel: 81-422-21-2501
Fax: 81-422-21-2391

e-mail: trademarks@yki.jp

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