This is for a Ph.D.
Now suppose I were to embark on a study of the German
patent system and make essentially no use of German
sources. How would such a study be received? In German
circles, would it rise above mutterings about monolingual
Americans?
In reading through McDaniel's ChemTech paper, I did
come across this gem:
[In support of the view that the JPO tailored its system
for incremental and imitative inventions]:
(quote)The 'physics' International Patent Classification [IPC]
was called "communication, electronics, and measurement"
by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) until 1977, when it
switched to the IPC system.(/quote)
Looking at the IPC, I note that Section G - Physics
contains the Classes
G01 Measuring; Testing
G02 Optics
G03 Photography, etc
G04 Horology
G05 Controlling
G06 Computing
G07 Checking Devices
G08 Signalling
G09 Educating
G10 Musical instruments; acoustics
G11 Information storage
G12 Instument details
G21 Nuclear physics
What is McDaniel's point?
Slightly lower in the article, McDaniel writes that
(quote) until 1988, the JPO required that patent
applications cover only a single invention claim.(/quote)
Now I wrote multiple claim Japanese patents in
1984 and 1985 that were granted in multiple claim
form. More authoritatively, Tanabe and Wegner in
Japanese Patent Law, AIPPI Japan, 1979, pointed
out that the JPO published guidelines for multiple
claims in 1975. They also point out that delays
in adopting multiple claims by Japanese companies
were in part due to concern about how the
Japanese courts would treat them, with the Osaka
High Court being distinctly more conservative than
the Tokyo High Court.
The article devotes significant space to the
discussion of utility models, noting that there
is no equivalent in the U.S. patent system
but failing to note the use of utility models
in the German system. (Tanabe and Wegner
do point out ways in which the Japenese
utitily model is closer to a patent than its
German counterpart.)
I fail to see how this can be considered PhD
work, but do note that the field is economics
and McDaniel is going on to a job in Washington.
-- Alan Engel ISTA, Inc. ConvertedKokai(tm) machine translations of Japanese patents http://www.intlscience.com
Tom Koehler wrote:
> For those who are truly interested -- there are two other papers by the > authors on the UC Boulder Dept. of Economics web server ... > > Impacts of the Japanese Patent System on Productivity Growth > http://patch.colorado.edu/Economics/research/wkpapers99.html > > Legal Features of the Japanese Patent System and Impacts on Technology > Diffusion > http://patch.colorado.edu/Economics/research/wkpapers98.html > > Tom Koehler > tom_koehler@yahoo.com