M@Blog » law

Japan Patents Court

matt — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 02:48:25 +0000

Some good, progressive news for Japan in a while – Japan’s first intellectual property disputes court.

The Government also planned to send lawyers and judges to Britain, Brussels and the US to study recent cases, and invite overseas legal experts to teach in Tokyo, Japanese cabinet sources said.

These things take time – and the U.S. is undergoing some serious IP-law issues currently – but hopefully we’ll see some more resolutions like this.

Loving Day

matt — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 07:37:43 +0000

Loving Day is June 12th. Check out the “legal map”. Amazing.

via Gen.

Reinstating the Draft?

matt — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 17:36:29 +0000

When I first heard about it, I surely thought it was a joke. I’m … speechless…

Why the Guardian?

matt — Mon, 24 May 2004 04:15:55 +0000

As BubbleGeneration points out, why did it take the Guardian?

George Bush’s ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction…

Read Nick Berg’s dad’s story.

Joining the Imperial family

matt — Tue, 11 May 2004 03:18:39 +0000

As mentioned briefly here, Princess Masako has been rather stressed, depressed, and in not so great health for the past year+. In the Prince’s announcement yesterday, he made it clear her ill-health was largely a fact of Imperial duties and not being able to maintain a career, let alone essentially function as a “normal person” – a clear jab at the Imperial Household. Such a statement could only have been made with the support of the Emporer and Empress. Princess Masako is an intelligent, well-educated, amibitious and aspiring woman now forced to Imperial duties of being a pawn. She’s not even allowed to drive – during her “escape” to the family’s summer home, she insisted she be allowed to drive a car. Ironic, isn’t it?

You’d think an Imperial family member would be able to make their own decisions, yet in reality the strings are being pulled by 60, 70 year old retired politicians molding the family into what they believe an Imperial Household should be like, with arcane early-morning (5am) rituals that most of the public doesn’t even know about. People think, “what a cush life”, living off tax-yen and having servants. In reality, it’s a life of not being able to realize your full potential. It’s particularly difficult for those who enter into the Imperial family after having experienced some semblence of a normal life, as Princess Masako had until getting married. In terms of the puppetry, I believe there are strong parellels between the Catholic church – with the Pope vs. his Cardinals – and the Imperial family vs. the Imperial Household.

I want to say ultimately that publicity of this is a good thing – there is increasing intolerance in this society of woman being pressured against pursuing a career. In addition, the only potential heir currently being their daughter is also causing a stir, with rewriting succession rules to accomodate females being considered. As sad as it is, this risk-averse culture hates to change unless “shit happens”.

More details about the situation.

Restricting Imports

matt — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 06:11:04 +0000

The Japanese government is at it again with their sneaky ways. Their most recent success has been making prices tax-included, which went into effect on April 1st. This means they can now raise sales taxes all they want w/o the general public getting full disclosure. Now, they want to restrict imports of copyrighted material, notably CDs. The problem started off when albums made by Japanese artists for export to China were being re-imported to Japan and sold cheaper than Japan-only albums. To curb this, the labels worked with gov’t to restrict such imports, but the actual proposed bill turns out to be much broader, giving them control over pricing of virtually any imported CD – even stuff intended for the Japanese market by overseas producers. This sort of protectionism sucks. It is not good for the consumer, and ultimately keeps potentially new and novel material out.

What can you do?

The original activist site is here, their English explanation here, and a petition here. It’s all in Japanese, but an English translation should soon follow, as in the long run not only do foreigners in Japan benefit from stopping this bill, but overseas artists have an interest as well. In the mean time, if you work for a Japanese company and/or work with Japanese colleagues frequently, I ask that you spread the news, and get some signatures.

Please.

Opposition to Dual Surnames

matt — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 14:17:36 +0000

This kind of crap is what makes Japan good for tourism but nothing else. This is just bullshit. What business does the LDP have determining which of two last names people use? In fact, this could have detrimental effects in fields such as medical research, where retaining one’s surname after having written journal papers and initiating ones own practice are important for peer recognition and career development. Damn this pisses me off to no end…ugh

Seoul, Korea

matt — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 15:54:10 +0000

Just got back from my first time in Seoul, Korea attending the 59th IETF conference. Overall a relaxing few days since my presentation was held early on and went fairly smoothly. Have a bit of work cut out for me, but nothing to stress about. Had some downtime to check out the city, although in some respects I felt even more homesick. Definitely amused by the complete disregard for copyrighted/trademarked material, although you know what they say about imitation. For originality, at least WalMart doesn’t go as far with their mannequinnes :) Overall a good time; as one friend pointed out, felt a bit like Tokyo in the ’80s.
Follow this link for the full gallery.

Crediting Quotes

matt — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:16:11 +0000

Google never ceases to amaze me. I frequently cut and paste snippets of text I find interesting from websites, articles, etc; they all go into a desktop Stickie designated for this collection of quotes. Unfortunately I’m not as thorough in tagging the quote with the source. But not matter how long the quote, such as this recent one:

Today, though, the advantages of size are trumped by what are called “diseconomies” of scale: inertia, bureaucracy, risk aversion, clock-watching, office politics.

Google manages to find it (what was the term for getting a single hit in Google?). Now if I can just remember who sent me the article in the first place :)

Btw, it’s a good article that’s quite relevent to other sectors besides biotech. Read it if you’re suffering from bigcompanyitis.

News in Japan

matt — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 04:36:23 +0000

Apparently Japan has raised its terror alert to the highest level, which is interesting because nobody — and I mean nobody — where I work who is a native Japanese is aware of this. French colleagues who work next to me are aware of it through their French news sources, American colleagues are aware of it through their English news sources, but none of my Japanese colleagues had a clue what I was talking about when I mentioned the alert level. Thanks, Japanese media.