Mr. Yoshiyuki MACHIDA, Senior Partner of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding “Analysis of Others’ Patent which may be a Bar to One’s Business and Measures to Avoid Infringing their Patent, and How to Create the Patent which can Suppress their Business”. This seminar was held online to prevent us from gathering as a measure against COVID-19. Our members studied how to interpret patent claims and examined patents which may serve as a bar to patent and how to avoid infringing patents while referring to precedents.
Mr. Yaocheng HU, Chinese Patent Attorney of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding “Revision of Examination Guideline and Latest IP Topics in China”. Especially, we studied the new guideline of the inventive step with considering difference between the Japanese and Chinese practices. After the seminar by Mr. HU, there was active discussion regarding the practical issues. Our members are interested in Chinese IP trend since the number of new Patent Applications and Office Actions for China in our firm are still great. We intend to actively provide knowledge obtained in this seminar with our clients.
Mr. Sigeru MIZUTANI, Patent Attorney of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding “How to draft claims and specification with considering OA response on outgoing family applications”. We studied on the basis of specific examples that the tendency of the examination varies depending on technical field of the invention and the patent system in each country. Moreover, the participants discussed how to draft claims and specification of first country application with considering second country application in the country such as China or EPC where the requirements of amendment is strictly limited.
Mr. Yoshiyuki MACHIDA, Senior Partner of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding points of focus and attention for AI related invention. In the seminar, many examples of AI related patent prosecutions and litigations have been introduced. We could understand the points of attention for the interview with inventor and the patent prosecutions.
Mr. Masakazu UCHIDA, Partner Patent Attorney of our firm, held an internal seminar entitled as “Reduction Scheme of PCT International Application Fees”. In the seminar, he explained that the reduction of a Submission Fee and a Search Fee of the PCT International application has been extended thereby the scheme can be applied for small and medium size companies, further specific procedure has been simplified (certificate is not required). In addition, we confirmed that we will provide information to our clients such as small and medium size companies, venture companies and universities so that our clients can use the reduction scheme.
Mr. Shinji NAKAMURA, Patent Attorney of our firm, held an internal seminar entitled as “Check Points of Claim Drafting of AI Related Inventions”. He explained about specific examples of AI related inventions added into the JPO’s Examination Handbook in January of this year. He also explained about some points to be considered in Claim Drafting with referring to actually allowed claims.
Mr. Kosaku YAMAZAKI, Patent Attorney of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding “Basic Knowledge about RPA”. RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is a software for automating operation of a PC. In the seminar, our people studied RPA’s functions, actual programming and application examples. In our firm, RPA is used in many of actual tasks. Recently, some of our staffs started RPA programming.
Mr. Yoshiyuki MACHIDA, Senior Partner of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding “How To Draft Patent Documents” referring to “Patent Documents Writing Manual” issued by the Japan Patent Information Organization (General Incorporated Foundation). We studied some points for drafting clear Japanese sentences with referring to specific examples such as (1) Sentence should be shortened, (2) Subject and/or Object should not be omitted, (3) Keep in mind understandable structure.
Mr. Yaocheng HU, Chinese Patent Attorney (admitted in China) of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding Chinese patent system. He talked about an outline of Chinese patent law and the patent examination guideline revised in April 2017. In the seminar, he explained about the Chinese patent system with considering the differences between Japanese and Chinese patent systems. We could understand Chinese patent system, thereby it helps us to understand the actual practices of the Chinese patent application.
Mr. Ichiro FUJINAMI, Patent attorney of patent section of our firm, held an internal seminar regarding recent trend of the Factory Automation (FA) technologies. He talked about how FA would be changed by incorporating IoT related technologies thereto. We could understand FA technologies while considering IP strategies thereof.
