Japanese CRISPR Patent and Biotech Developments in the Early Reiwa Era

Abstract

On February 25, 2020, in the second year of the Reiwa era, the Intellectual Property High Court of Japan (IPHCJ) issued two appellate decisions relating to the groundbreaking, Nobel Prize–winning, genome-editing technology, CRISPR. This article will outline the IPHCJ decisions' interpretative scope of the Japanese patent law novelty bar (secret prior art) where an earlier-filed, but subsequently published, patent application is regarded as prior art against a later-filed patent application. This analysis is topical in view of the vigorous first-to-file patent filing race amongst various CRISPR research and commercial interests, since Japan is one of the world's most important biotech and health care markets. The article will also provide a snapshot review of CRISPR, university-related biotech start-ups, and biotechnology in Japan during the global COVID-19 pandemic.