【Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property】

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Intellectual Property Law as a Subject of the Exam

RC Shun Kuwabara

This month's column tries to look at how "Intellectual Property Law" is treated in Law Schools. "Intellectual Property Law" was added as an elective to the subjects of new judicial exam in Japan. Although it was newly added, the "Intellectual Property Law" ranked third in the popularity stakes in its first year, following labor law and bankruptcy law.
(http://www.moj.go.jp/SHIKEN/SHINSHIHOU/shin03.pdf)
There would be many reasons for the ranking. One reason would be an effect of recent IP boom. One reason would be that the relatively high number of people with math and science majors took an exam in the first year of the new judicial exam. In addition, from what I have heard from other law school students, some of them selected IP Law because it was an "easy subject to pass". Namely, the exam subject was "Intellectual Property Law", however, the exam coverage was only Patent Law and Copyright Law. And the part of neighboring rights was excluded from the Copyright Law. And there was no way to make questions about patent procedure. Therefore, the coverage became quite narrow. It is understandable that students selected it for that reason because they needed to pass the exam. However, my concern is that such people often said boastfully, "So, I will only study patent and copyright." It is a waste they study only two categories from IP Law. Can they really say they studied IP Law without knowing anything about Trademark Law, Unfair Competition Law, or Design Law? But no small numbers of law schools have only Patent Law and Copyright Law as their curriculum. It is not necessarily appropriate to blame students. Many issues remained for the future discussion including law school's curriculum. However, in the end, it is a student who should study IP Law. So it is important for them to show sprit to study very hard. Especially, IP Law is linked to not only Civil Procedure Law, but also Administrative Law, Economic Law, Private International Law, Trust Law, Tax Law, and other legal fields. A student must cut to the heart of the neighboring fields on his motive. I strongly encourage those who will study IP to reach not only Patent Law and Copyright Law, but also overall IP Law, furthermore, neighboring fields. I also started studying Tax Law this summer and it confounds me very much right now.