Episode 34

On April 24th, in an appeal trial (Supreme Court Judgment of April 24, 2026, Second Petty Bench, Case No. 356 (Ju) of 2025) concerning copyright infringement of a children's chair (TRIPP TRAPP) between a Norwegian company and a Japanese company, the Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement of mass-produced practical goods is only recognized in exceptional cases, and dismissed the Norwegian company's claim.
According to the judgment, if the shape, etc., of the whole or part of a mass-produced practical goods can be conceptually understood as a creative expression of thought or feeling, separate from the configuration derived from its function, then the whole or part of said mass-produced practical goods falls under the category of works within the realm of art as defined in Article 2, Paragraph 1, Item 1 of the Copyright Act.
Applying this to the present case, the shape, etc., of the whole or part of the chair in question can only be understood as a configuration derived from its function as a children's chair, and cannot be understood separately as a creative expression of thought or feeling. Therefore, the chair in question cannot be considered a copyrighted work.
Based on the above, the lower court's judgment regarding the points raised by the appellant can be affirmed as correct and does not conflict with the precedent cited by the appellant, and the appeal was dismissed.
"When the appeal is found to be without merit based on the appeal brief, statement of grounds for appeal, answer, and other documents, the appeal may be dismissed by judgment without oral arguments" (Article 319 of the Code of Civil Procedure). Therefore, in this case, a judgment of dismissal should have been possible without oral arguments.
The Intellectual Property High Court has issued judgments regarding copyright infringement of the chair in question, including one recognizing its copyrightability (Intellectual Property High Court, Case No. 10063 (Ne) of 2014, April 14, 2015) and another denying it (Original court: Case No. 10111 (Ne) of 2023, September 25, 2024), but both concluded with dismissal of the claim.
Since the Supreme Court is a court of law, if there is an error in the factual findings, it will, in principle, rule on the method of determining the facts, and remand the case to the lower court for the actual factual findings (Article 325 of the Code of Civil Procedure).
Looking at the reasoning of the judgment in this appeal, it can be inferred that the Supreme Court research officer intended to remand the case to have the lower court re-evaluate the copyrightability of the chair in question, changing the lower court's statement that "copyrightability is recognized for the creative expression of the shape, etc., of a practical product like the plaintiff's product only when it includes a part that is an object of independent aesthetic appreciation separate from its practical function, or when the practical product is deemed to have been produced solely for the purpose of aesthetic appreciation" to "copyrightability is recognized when the shape, etc., of the whole or part of a mass-produced practical product can be grasped conceptually as a creative expression of thought or feeling, separate from the configuration derived from function." In the judgment regarding the copyright infringement of the chair in question (Intellectual Property High Court, Case No. 10063 (Ne) of 2014, April 14, 2015), which recognized copyright protection for the chair in question, copyright infringement was not recognized because the chair was not similar to the appellee's chair, even though copyright protection was recognized for the chair in question.
In contrast, the chair of the respondent in this appeal is highly similar to the chair in question, and if copyright protection is recognized for the chair in question, the probability of copyright infringement being established increases.
Lower courts (district and high courts) only need to focus on the conclusion of the case when writing their judgments, but the Supreme Court may consider the impact of the judgment on society and make decisions from a political perspective.
In this case, a foreign company sued a Japanese company based on the copyright of its product. Even if the Japanese company wins the case, the legal fees and time required for litigation will be a significant burden. For small and medium-sized enterprises, this could even lead to bankruptcy.
If copyright protection for mass-produced, practical goods is recognized, similar lawsuits by foreign companies may become frequent in the future. To protect Japanese companies from such lawsuits, it is considered preferable from an industrial policy perspective to deny copyright protection for mass-produced, practical goods and dismiss such cases outright.
Therefore, it is natural to assume that the decision was changed just before the judgment to dismiss the case without recognizing copyright protection.
The investigating officer was forced to write a judgment reasoning different from the original plan, resulting in an unsatisfactory judgment. It is thought that Judge Akira Ojima added a supplementary opinion to compensate for this.
Judge Akira Ojima, given his career (Supreme Court Investigator → Cabinet Legislation Bureau Counselor → Senior Investigator → Chief Investigator), is the only Supreme Court justice currently capable of writing judgments himself.
In recent years, the High Courts and the Supreme Court seem to have adopted a system where, when distributing cases to the appropriate department, they do not distribute them mechanically, but rather distribute them to the department (panel) appropriate to the content of each case.
The case in question, in which an appeal has been filed, is considered to have had a significant impact on society due to the potential for its conclusion to be deleted. Therefore, it was assigned to the Second Petty Bench, to which Justice Akira Ojima, the only Supreme Court justice currently capable of writing his own judgments, belongs.
Unlike district and high courts, the Supreme Court's presiding judge is the chief judge (the judge who prepares the judgment). However, in this case, Justice Akira Ojima is effectively the chief judge.
In his supplementary opinion, Justice Akira Ojima argues that even mass-produced or practical items, such as prints (which are mass-produced), are explicitly considered works of art under Article 10, Paragraph 1, Item 4 of the Copyright Law. Furthermore, practical items like tea ceremony utensils and tableware can also be considered works of art. Therefore, the mere fact that something is a mass-produced practical item does not automatically negate its copyrightability. Artworks and crafts are considered works of art under Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Copyright Law. Typical examples include craftworks that are individually produced and practical items. However, there is no provision in the law that definitively defines this, and it cannot be definitively said that there are no mass-produced practical items that fall under this category.
While the scope of what constitutes an artwork or craft is not necessarily clear, it is clear that the chair in question is not an artwork or craft, and therefore, the requirements for such classification do not need to be considered in this case.
The Supreme Court judgment in this case does not provide general requirements for determining whether a mass-produced practical item constitutes an artwork, but rather provides a specific judgment that the chair in question is not an artwork or craft. Therefore, it is a judicial precedent, not a case law. A "case law" is a judgment that includes legal views applicable to other cases; merely stating the reasons in a particular case does not constitute a case law (Supreme Court, Case No. 3474 of 1951 (A), Decision of the First Petty Bench of February 12, 1953, Criminal Collection, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 211). Therefore, it is not possible to file a petition for acceptance of appeal based on this Supreme Court judgment (Article 318, Paragraph 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure).

Episode 33

In Episode 27, we explained the distinction between copyright law and design law regarding the protection of images in virtual space (metaverse).
This time, we will examine the possibility of copyright protection for avatars.
Regarding the definition of "avatar," Wikipedia states, "An avatar is a character image used primarily for communication purposes as a 'alter ego' of a user on a computer network."
Based on this definition, the Supreme Court ruling on copyright infringement (Supreme Court Judgment No. 1443 (O) of 1992, July 17, 1997, First Petty Bench, Minshu Vol. 51, No. 6, p. 2714) stated that "a copyrighted work under the Copyright Act is defined as 'a creative expression of thoughts or feelings' (Article 2, Paragraph 1, Item 1 of the same Act). In a serialized manga in a self-contained-episode format in which characters with certain names, appearances, roles, etc., are repeatedly depicted, each manga in which such characters are depicted constitutes a copyrighted work. It is not possible to consider the so-called characters of these characters as copyrighted works, separate from the specific manga. This is because what is called a character is an abstract concept, perhaps best described as the personality of a character, sublimated from the concrete expression of the manga. It is not the concrete expression itself, and therefore cannot be considered a creative expression of thoughts or feelings. Consequently, in a serialized manga in a self-contained-episode format, copyright infringement can occur for each completed manga, and in order to determine whether copyright infringement has occurred, it is necessary to consider which manga in the serialized manga is relevant."
Based on this line of thinking, even with avatars, copyright law protects only the individual images or videos represented in the virtual space; characters that are separate from concrete representations of people are not subject to protection.

Episode 32

In Episode 7, we discussed the point that excessive descriptions of the effects of an invention when drafting a patent specification can narrow the scope of rights.
Regarding the relationship between an invention's inventive step and its effects, a court decision (Tokyo High Court, Case 2002 (Gyo-Ke) No. 460, Decision of March 23, 2004) stated, "The inventive step of an invention should, in principle, be judged based on its objective structure. The very act of attempting to solve a specific problem through that structure is, in the end, merely the inventor's subjective intention. Affirming patentability based on the existence of such an intention would ultimately result in the granting of multiple patents with objectively identical structures, and is therefore unacceptable. However, there may be exceptional circumstances in which a patent may be granted for an invention whose structure itself is easily conceivable, such as when an effect is discovered that would not have been easily anticipated or discovered by a person skilled in the art."
Regarding the relationship between the inventive step and effect of this invention, the Supreme Court ruled (Supreme Court Decision No. 69 of 2018 (Gyo-Hi) of August 27, 2019, Third Petty Bench, Shumin No. 262, p. 51) that "regarding the existence of an inventive step in a patented invention relating to the pharmaceutical use of a compound, the court below denied that the effect of the patented invention was unpredictable and significant."
While this ruling was made in the specific field of "whether or not a patented invention relating to the pharmaceutical use of a compound involves an inventive step," the basic concept can also be applied to determining inventive step in patent application examination.
The way the effect of the invention is described in the specification will differ depending on whether the feature of the invention lies in the basic configuration or in the significant effect achieved by that configuration.
When drafting the specification, careful consideration should be given to whether the effect of the configuration of the invention could have been predicted by a person skilled in the art at the time of filing, and whether it is a significant effect that goes beyond the range of effects that a person skilled in the art could have predicted from the configuration. If such a significant effect exists, it should be described in the specification.
Currently, infringement of equivalents is being examined in patent infringement lawsuits (see Episode 23). In order to make it easier to recognize infringement by equivalents for alleged infringing products that have different configurations from the claimed invention, it is considered effective to state the advantageous effects obtained by the claimed invention in order to clarify the second requirement of equivalents (having the same functional effect). Making it easier to recognize infringement by equivalents will lead to expanding the scope of rights.