In this era of globalization, it is necessary for a company to register design rights in Japan when the company sells their products in Japan and exports their products to Japan. Based on design rights, a third party cannot immitate your industrial design and the company having the industrial design can claim for damages if the third party violates your design right.

　For design applications in Japan, there are two routes, one by filing national design applications to the Japan patent office and the other by filing international applications based on the Hague Agreement designating Japan.

• Required information for filing a national industrial design application

  ・the subject description of the design
  ・drawings preferably including front, rear, top, and both side views.Photo pictures are also acceptable instead of the drawings
  ・the full and non-abbreviated name and address of the applicant
  ・the application number and its filing date of any priority application, when claiming priority

  Priority can be claimed if the first application is filed within the last six month. A certified copy of the priority application must be filed within three month from the Japanese filing date.

  An industrial design application must be wrriten in Japanese. Iif a foreign language (e.g. English) is included in your application, it must be translated into Japanese.
  

• Appointting a patent attorney

  If you do not have a permanent address or residence(Office, if the applicant is a legal entity) in Japan, a legal representative(such as a patent attoney) with a permanent address or residence in Japan must be appointed as a patent administrator.Except for a few exceptions, all procedures must be conducted through your patent administrator.

  In addition to this, it is strongly recommended that you appoint a patent attorney as your representative because patent attoneys are extremely knowledgeable about Patent, design, and trademark laws and the necessary filing procedures to complete the process successfully.
  

• as for a power of attorney

  You do not need to submit a signed power of attoney when applying a patent, trademark, and design.However, if you appoint a representative(e.g.a patent attorney) acting on behalf of your client to proceed with our patent office afterwards, you need to submit a power of attorney.
  

　Japan has adopted the examination system in terms with industrial design applications. All applications are placed under substantative examination after formalities are checked.

　You can click here to get the flow chart which shows the steps of obtaining a design right in Japan.

　Notification of reasons for refusal will be issued if any inappropriateness is found in the examination, which can be responded to within a specified response period (e.g.three months) by submission of an argument accompanied by amendment if necessary.

　We will offer you special fees below for our Japanese industrial design services.

• Filing stage

  Our service fee: $160
  Official fee：about$500+$30per one drawing
  

• Examination stage

  Our service fee: $300(this cost may vary with the complexity of the OA)
  translation fee(if necessary):it depends on the number of English words(26yen per English word)
  

• Grant stage

  Our service fee: $100
  Official fee：about$85/for 1~3 year of basic fee(each year), about$169/for 4~20 year of basic fee(each year)