Patent offices full of work in Japan
1990/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
In the offices that exist in Japan to register new patents, besides working. Every year they receive 350,000 requests for mechanisms, systems, etc. patent (double that makes ten).
For comparison, we will say that in 1989 108,000 patents were registered in the United States, but 47% of them were requested by foreigners, especially Japanese. The first four companies that have registered the most patents in the United States last year were: Hitachi (1053 patents), Toshiba (961), Canon (949) and Fuji Photo (884 patents), the four Japanese. The fifth is the American company General Electric (818 patents), ahead of Mitsubishi Denki (also Japanese).
Since the workload of Japan's patent offices is so high, companies have been asked to cut their demands until the implementation of the computer system in 1993.
The problem has a simple explanation. In Japan, research and development is mainly funded by the private sector and is primarily concerned with cost-effective short-term applications. Therefore, they record any improvement or small modification in the manufacture of the products. Apart from mere research, they are responsible for applied research. They visit all trade fairs and analyze the official bulletins of all States analyzing each of the registered patents.
