Intellectual Property Information

UNDUE COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS?

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun morning paper of June 7, 2002, private patent-information-service companies offered an opinion to the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), in which the JPO is requested to brake functional expansion of "Industrial Property Electronic Library" managed by the JPO.

In this opinion, the private companies each request the following:

To charge for sophisticated search service;
To prohibit large-scale corporations from using search service; and
To organize a conference to clarify individual roles of the JPO and private companies.

In a similar case between Japan Meteorological Agency, another government agency and private companies, the private companies requested the Japan Meteorological Agency to reconsider initiating the weather forecast on its home page (according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun evening paper of June 12, 2002).

It is not certain whether such expansion of the service by the Government agency comes under the so-called undue competition with private institutions. From a viewpoint of users who have frequently used the service provided by the JPO, we expect that reasonable and high quality service will become available as a result of competitiveness effect between the government agencies and private companies.