Japanese submarine patents: examined patents within a year of filing!
Changes to the criteria for accelerated examination in the Japanese Patent Office have resulted in some examined applications never appearing as A documents, being first published as B1 documents, often very quickly. The article explores the implications of this change for all involved in searching and using Japanese patent information. For example, coverage of these patents is very sparse outside of Japanese-language commercial patent databases. In addition, they are granted almost exclusively to Japanese applicants. They are concentrated in electronics and telecommunications. Numbers at present are about 7000 annually.
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