A patent's duration is fairly standard in Japan: 20 years from the filing date. (For a PCT international application that enters the national phase in Japan, that is 20 years from the international filing date.) Sometimes, though, an applicant might not be able to work the invention right away and want to extend the expiration date of the patent. What then? (When) can I extend my patent's duration? Unlike with the USPTO, the JPO does [...]

Addressing indefiniteness under Nautilus, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court's finding that the claim term "effective for catalyzing" was indefinite even though the claim did not specify a way of measuring or a standard for determining "effectiveness." BASF Corporation v. Johnson Matthey Inc., Case No. 16-1770 (Fed. Cir., Nov. 20, 2017) (Taranto, J). BASF sued Johnson Matthey for infringement of a patent directed to systems for performing catalytic conversion [...]

A common question in Chinese intellectual property (IP) law posed by many foreign businesses and counsels when they first begin operation in the PRC is the extent to which Chinese characters and colors are protected under Chinese IP law. English is almost universally accepted as the language of international business, but domestic Chinese consumers will typically look for Chinese characters and colors before looking at the English version of a brand name. Therefore, a [...]