Amendment of Law on Restoration of Rights｜IP Laws & Practices

As previously reported in our Newsletter and website in May 2021, Law Amendment in 2021 resulted in the enactment of the revision to the effect that the conditions to restore the rights which had been forfeited due to the lapse of the due date should be drastically relaxed from the "justifiable reason" standard to the "unintentional" standard. The revision finally comes into effect on April 1 of this year.

From April 1, 2023, the conditions to restore the rights which have been forfeited due to the lapse of the due date are relaxed from "justifiable reason" standard ("Due Care" in the Patent Law Treaty) to "unintentional" standard. By this revision, for example, the lapse of due date due to an input error in the deadline management software will be newly relieved. In order to restore the rights, only a short statement is required, and no evidence is necessary. When applying for restoration, however, a certain amount of restoration fee is required to be paid (in the case of a patent, JPY 212,100 (about $1,600) *).
* The fee has been reduced from that in our previous report.

This revision is applied to several procedures, such as, submission of translation when entering the Japanese national phase, claiming priorities, and filing a request for examination, and is subject to the procedures for which the due date has lapsed after April 1, 2023.

K&P's Comments
Although the conditions to restore the rights are relaxed, the restoration fee is required to be paid. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully manage deadlines as before.

Kawaguti & Partners