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Under Article 105-2-11 of the revised Patent Act – in effect as of 1 April 2022 – a system for soliciting third-party opinions, known as amicus briefs in Japan, is available in patent litigation. In litigation pertaining to infringement of patent rights or exclusive licences, the court may, when it deems necessary upon motion of either party, hear the opinions of other parties. It may also request the public at large to submit a document stating its opinions on the application of the law and other necessary matters concerning the case in question, within a reasonable time period. However, this system is available only to the courts specified in each item of Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure (currently, the Tokyo and Osaka District Courts) and the Intellectual Property High Court as the appellate court of these courts.
On 28 April 2021, the revised Act on the Limitation of Liability for Damages of Specified Telecommunications Service Providers and the Right to Demand Disclosure of Identification Information of the Sender2 was enacted and is due to come into effect on 1 October 2022. The amendment contained therein will add a new procedure for demanding the disclosure of the identification information of the sender to provide more prompt remedies for the infringement of rights on the internet than the current procedures allow. The revised law introduces a new procedure for petitioning to order the disclosure of the identification information of the sender, which enables demands for the disclosure of such information to be made to both content and access providers in a single procedure. It also clarifies that, if the sender must be identified, it is possible to demand the disclosure of the identification information of the sender at the time of the login that is substantially related to the infringing information. The number of court cases of this type in Japan is increasing annually and thus we should closely monitor future practice trends influenced by this amendment.
