This article explains Position of Design Rights and Trademark Rights in the Intellectual Property Law, Definition of Designs, Requirement for Registration of Designs, Range of Design Rights, Definition of Trademarks, Requirement for Registration of Trademarks, and Range of Trademark Rights, and refers to Conflicts of Design Rights, Trademark Rights and Copyright and Institutional Adjustment of Conflicts.

The difference between “Brand” and “Trademark” is rather vague. Are there different ones? The brand can be defined as total elements which can be recognized as personality/indication of origin of products, services and companies. Trademark is an element of “Brand”. Protection of Brand/Powerful brand enables a company to communicate with consumers more easily, and this may result in acquisition of competitive advantage other than cost, volume and technology. This article introduces some examples of brand strategy and its relationship with Intellectual Property rights.

In this article, methods of design search by “J-PlatPat” and “Graphic Image Park” are introduced. The J-PlatPat is a patent information providing service equipped with the functions of gazette retrieval for designs, reference to legal status of applications, and others. Users can search design gazettes by entering a retrieval keyword, Japanese design classification, etc. The Graphic Image Park is an assistant tool to efficiently search design gazettes that contain displayed graphic images. By just doing “Drag＆Drop” your own graphic image design onto this tool, existing registered designs will be displayed in the order from those with more common characteristics to less, according to the automated data evaluation based on an image matching technology.

For Japanese trademarks, various books have been published, and much information is available from Japan Patent Office and related organizations, IP law firms, local governments, etc. Also, it is relatively easy to find information via online searches. On the other hand, it is not so easy to gather necessary information on the overseas trademark searches, trademarks applied / registered abroad and overseas databases offered by foreign trademark offices. This article will explain the overview of the overseas trademark searches, and then briefly describe how the overseas databases are utilized during these searches and the things one should take note of. The article will also refer to important overseas databases, their noteworthy functions, points to watchout for, etc.

Japan is aiming “Nation of IP Human Capital”. First, the national policy on IP education is introduced. Then common ideas and basic attitudes towards the IP educator and recipient are discussed. Typical IP specialists are those who can promote creation, protection and utilization of IP right. Training for such specialists begins with keeping interest in IP matter and fostering IP mindset. After that, a part of practical IP education method in the IP department of a company is reported. Jobs of patent application and research are good combination in the way of learning IP skills. And the challenge of IP management is restructuring IP information.