Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY
An IPR strategy for Japan
Japan pursues, after a policy statement of Prime Minister Koizumi on February 4,
2002, the goal “…to become an intellectual-property based nation” in order to
strengthen its competitiveness (Sathirakul, 2006). Following that announcement, a
number of actions have been taken in order to boost qualified IP usage, the most
important one being the adoption of an Intellectual Property Strategic Programme.
Enacted in 2003, it was designed by the “Intellectual Property Strategic
Headquarters” – specially set up for this purpose. The programme outlines the
following activity areas:
1. Foster measures to fight counterfeiting and piracy
2. Develop a world leading IP system
3. Improve support for SMEs and start-up companies that use venture
capital
4. Develop strategic activities in global standardisation
5. Move towards becoming a creative nation
6. Promote human resources development
7. Accelerate industry-academia-government collaboration
The introduction of the IP strategy followed earlier legislative developments to
improve the framework for IPR utilisation – such as the introduction of the Law on
“Promoting University-Industry Technology Transfer” (TLO Law) in 1998, the “Law
for Revitalizing Industrial Activities” (the 1999 Law) or the “Law for Enhancing
Industrial Technology” in 2000 (Nishizawa, 2007). The introduction of the IP
strategy gave impetus to the creation of a coherent IPR support policy which would
address the issue of IPR at multiple policy levels. The rationale for the strategy
has to be also seen against the background of the unfavourable economic
development of Japan in the 1990s, which is frequently referred to as the “Lost
Decade” (Sathirakul, 2006).
The IP strategy had to address framework conditions of which some were, and to
an extent may continue to be specific to Japan. For example, traditional ways of
handling IP and IPR, technology transfer or even the more general ways of
conducting business affected how IP was handled. Some of these conditions could
be considered favourable: Japan was, for example, among the first nations to
introduce utility models as an IPR at the beginning of the 20th century (Suzuki,
2005), indicative of a well-rooted IPR tradition.
On the other hand, many seemingly successful features of modern innovation
systems (such as incubators, clusters, technology licensing offices) have not been
present in Japan until recently (Rissmanen & Viitanen, 2001: 3). Technology
transfer occurred mainly directly from university professors to large companies by
using a system of donations. As a result, big companies appropriated thus “…a far
larger share of university discoveries than what they actually supported” (Kneller,
2007). Another case in point – and with high relevance for SME policy – seems to
be the “keiretsu” system of collaboration between large firms and SMEs (Sathirakul,
2006). It basically describes a system of long term partnerships where SMEs
produce on behalf of their larger counterparts. This system seems to make it very
difficult for new SMEs to enter a market; in addition, Japanese SMEs depend to a
rather large extent on the activities of big enterprises within this system. The overall
Japanese innovation performance is said to have been affected by this dependency,
too, as during the “lost decade” big companies reverted to a low-risk policy
concerning the introduction of innovations and fostered more incremental
improvements to secure established market shares.
The IP strategy in practice – implications for Japanese SMEs
The keiretsu system and the donation system in university technology transfer
are considered to constitute main inhibiting factors for the development of
entrepreneurial and related innovative activities. These systems provide a rationale