JFY2014 Awardees[General category: Yen 15 million/($135,000)year for up to 3 years][Special category: Yen 30 million ($270,000)/year for up to 3 years]
Project[General Category]
Development ofBenchmarks of the
Quality of Prior Art
Search inInternational Patent
Prosecution
Processes[Special Category]Establishment ofMethodology andDatabase for Life
Cycle-Based
Environmental
Assessment andInstallation to theSociety for the
Promotion of Green
Procurement

PI
Setsuko ASAMI
Professor
Graduate Schoolof Innovation
Studies, Tokyo
University ofScience

Norihiro ITSUBO
Environmental
Studies, Tokyo
City University

Synopsis
When doing business internationally, patent protection in each country is indispensable. However, thequality of the patent examination varies among patent offices. A patent office with low examination
quality could overlook an advanced technology and grant invalid patent rights leading to many
lawsuits.
In order to facilitate the quantitative comparison of the examination quality of patent offices indifferent countries, this project seeks to use statistical methods to analyze the comprehensiveness ofprior document searches in international applications such as the ones submitted under the Patent
Cooperation Treaty or PCT (whose contracting states differ in their examination processing times) anddevelop benchmarks for examination quality.
Along with facilitating improvements in the quality of examinations and a better understanding of
where the international framework is heading, such benchmarks would also allow us to better predict
the outcome of a patent application for the applicant.
To promote green purchasing in collaboration with industry, government, and private sector andcarry out continuing green innovation, an assessment standard for the environment shared bydiverse stakeholders are necessary. Currently in European countries, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)based green purchasing is gaining attention. Meanwhile, it is hard to say that LCA is adequatelyreflected in green purchasing nowadays in Japan.
This project develops an analytic technique for evaluating environmental hot spots using a latest
database of environmental impact and a technique to assess the environmental impact. By making gooduse of scientific methods, one hundred items will be analyzed. Also, by spreading assessment results tosociety and adopting an environmental label, we aim to promote Green purchasing based on LCA mindeffectively.

Collaborators
Faculty of Economics, Gakushuin
University
Institute of Innovation Research,
Graduate School of Commerce andManagement, Hitotsubashi University
International IP Legislation ResearchOffice, International Association for theProtection of Intellectual Property ofJapan
Institute of Intellectual Property

Research Institute of Science for Safety
and Sustainability, the National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Scienceand Technology
School of Political Science andEconomics, Waseda University
Japan Environment Association

[Special Category]Innovation in
Evidence-Informed
Policy Making:Through
Visualizing andRedesigning Social
Systems forCountermeasuresagainst Regional
Disparity in
Healthcare Quality

Yuichi IMANAKA
Professor,
Graduate Schoolof Medicine,
Kyoto University

It is urgently required for Japan, where the aged society is in progress, and facing financial difficulties,
to rebuild an effective social system that supports the lively living of the elderly and young people. To
achieve that, addressing regional disparities in the quality of medical care is of pressing concern.

[Special Category]
Realizing
Policymaking
Process ofInfectious Disease
Control using
Mathematical
Modeling
Techniques

HiroshiNISHIURA
Assoc. Prof.
Graduate Schoolof Medicine, theUniversity ofTokyo

Thanks to the dramatic development of computer science and theThis project covers diseases such as cerebral infarctions and acute myocardial infarctions, whichbecome a particularly heavy burden on society, and takes up the regional gaps in the quality of
medical care as an assignment. The caps will be graphically represented by using big data analytics.
Also, such graphically represented data can be shared widely with the people who are concerned,
then we aim to build a system in which each component does its role to advance effective policies
and measures.

Kyoto University
National Institute of Public Health
Gakushuin University
Kyoto Tachibana University
Kyoto University of Art & Design
The Japan Stroke Association
Community-care Policy Network
Japan Municipal Hospital Association
National Caravan Mate Liaison Council
Secretariat
Studio-L