VALUING IP IN JAPAN

Yet another book has caught the IPKat's attention. This one's called Valuing Intellectual Property in Japan, Britain and the United States. It's a collection of essays edited by Ruth Taplin and it's published by RoutledgeCurzon (an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group). Ruth is Director of The Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies and Editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics. A Research Fellow, Birkbeck College, and the University of Leicester, she has generated nine books.

This smart little 163 page hardback is

"written by the foremost authorities in the field from Britain, Japan and the US. [It] considers the latest developments and puts forward much new thinking. The book includes thorough coverage of developments in Japan, which is reviewing the value of IP at a much quicker pace than any other country and is registering ever-increasing numbers of patents in the course of inventing its way out of economic inertia".

The book's contents go far beyond its title. For example, British Library patent specialist Steve van Dulken has contributed a very helpful chapter on "Japanese patent publications as a source of information" which, given the vast number of patent documents in Japanese, is a subject crying out for clear guidance and direction. Another chapter that the IPKat singles out for attention is Masako Wakui's account of standardisation and patent pools in Japan, a jurisdiction that has had a far more positive attitude towards cartels than has the US or the EU.