With the advent of the year 2020, there comes news that Japan is
planning to strengthen Intellectual
Property (IP) control over its premium products, like
fruits and vegetables being sold overseas to prevent its high-end crops from
being grown and then sold as the products of other countries.
As per Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries
(MAFF), the crops that have been influenced by the failure to appropriate
implementation of IP control abroad include the high-end Shine Muscat grapes.
It is a crop being produced by other nations such as Korea and China.
FoodNavigator-Asia, one of the leading online news sources for the
food industry for near about 20 years, confirmed with MAFF that the proposed
initiative for ministry to handle this situation is to appoint a private
company to work on the Intellectual
Property Protection of Japan’s newly
cultivated fruits and vegetables.
MAFF officer, who opted to remain anonymous, emphasized that
although it hasn’t yet been confirmed, the department is seeking at budgeting
for such a company to help Japan secure new fruit and vegetable varieties. He
added that discussion on this matter is on-going internally, but no official
details are in place till now. This protection would likely be applied only to
new produce varieties.
That said, if approved, such a move would bring good outcomes for
the country’s agricultural industry, which is striving to boost up its high-end
fruit and vegetable exports from the current estimated JPY1tn (US$9.2mn), as
per Japan times.
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries’s
Intellectual Property Strategy 2020 report also lined up strengthening the IP
protection of new plant varieties as a vital area of focus to uplift
competitiveness of the nation’s seed and seedling industry.
MAFF, in the strategy report, said that it is crucial to establish
an environment where breeders can easily obtain and use legal rights to promote
the new and excellent plant varieties with international competitiveness both
in Japan and abroad. Measures to strengthen IP protection was highlighted as a
significant section of the report, with the ministry aiming to do so by both:
·
Providing support against any IP infringement
·
Developing technology and tools that can aid the
IP-holders to prove their rights to ownership
MAFF added that it is essential to ensure that the right holders
can confirm the IP violation overseas and take border measures promptly and
appropriately. Besides these, several other efforts are being planned by Japan
and MAFF. One out of them includes methods to identify the geographical area
where a product is being produced and ways to conserve varieties for which new
applications have been filed.
As part of the doings undertaken by MAFF Intellectual Property
Consortium, which is known as Japan’s IP protection watchdog for its products’
overseas Trademark Applications, activities related
to Geographical Indication ranked very high
on the list, according to the consortium’s latest report.
Emphasizing GI, MAFF said that in Japan, many brand products have
already obtained a remarkable reputation because of their unique production
approaches and natural characteristics like regional climate and soil
conditions. The GI Act helps the government to protect the name of such
products.
He ended by saying that Japan works with a dedicated GI symbol to
indicate protected products. Moreover, to achieve its aim, the nation has
recently established a webpage on the online tax donation website Satofull. It
is a site that allows people to donate their produces to preferred
municipalities in situations of disaster. In return, they would be benefitted
by having a large portion of total donation deducted from their taxes. For
more visit: https://www.kashishipr.com/
Don’t forget to
follow us on social media:
Contact - US
No comments:
Post a Comment