Tokyo District Court, 2022 (Wa) 22517 <Sugita> [Toilet Roll] [Roll Product Package]
Updated: 1 day ago
Article information
Article type: Case note
Category: Patents
Topics: Doctrine of equivalents
First published on this website: 2026-11-01
Display and classification checked: November 2, 2026
Originally published on Ameblo: 2024-09-02 (Japan time). Full English translation.
Tokyo District Court, 2022 (Wa) 22517 <Sugita>
[Toilet Roll (First Patent)]
*For the double-embossed defendant products, “the embossing on the front and back does not necessarily overlap, and coincidence of the embossing edges is not guaranteed.” The court therefore held that the embossing edges could not be identified and the embossing depth could not be established.
⇒ Claim limitation not satisfied
[Roll Product Package (Second Patent)]
*The court denied only the third requirement of equivalence (obviousness of substitution at the time of manufacture) and the fifth requirement!!
“In the defendant products …, only the central part of the slit is arcuate upward, and its basic shape differs from the configuration of Invention 2….”
(Excerpts from the court's reasoning)
<Claim element> 1B: The embossing depth of said embossing is 0.05–0.40 mm.
Even assuming the embossing is approximately square, the longest portion a in Specification 1 is not necessarily the length of its horizontal side …, and the location at which the measured sectional curve is obtained to measure embossing depth under the plaintiff's measurement method is not necessarily the location shown in Specification 1. …The one-shot images of each defendant product … show …that the embossing edges of the products cannot be clearly located. …The defendant products cannot necessarily be said to have an embossing edge fr of the kind presupposed by Invention 1. …
Given the nature of embossing in toilet rolls, some variation in the shapes of individual embossings can be expected. However, the embossing depth D in Invention 1 is measured on toilet rolls for which an embossing height profile on the X–Y plane can be obtained …and the embossing edge fr and its longest portion a can be located, after obtaining sectional curves as in Figure 5(b) and Figure 6. The invention states that its effect is achieved in toilet rolls whose embossing depth D, measured in this manner, has specified numerical values. Each defendant product is ordinary two-ply double embossing formed by ply-bonding without specifically adjusting the relative positions of the embossing protrusions and depressions on the sheets…. In such double-embossed toilet rolls, the embossing applied respectively to the front and back does not necessarily overlap, and the edges are not guaranteed to coincide. As a result, the embossing edges are unclear; displacement of protrusions and depressions can also cause interference and produce embossing of indistinct shape. According to the Exhibit Ko 51 report, in each defendant product, a local maximum of upward-convex curvature in the sectional curve is found at the center of a portion identified by the plaintiff as embossing, among other things. It is therefore not necessarily clear whether that embossing has the depressed shape envisaged for measuring embossing depth D in Invention 1. Nor can it necessarily be said that the embossing height profile on the X–Y plane permits identification of the embossing edge fr and its longest portion a. Thus, even if ten embossings are selected and measured on each defendant toilet roll having such embossing, and a particular depth D is calculated as their average, it cannot be said that the embossing depth D in Invention 1 has been measured.
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The first-published date remains unchanged. Display maintenance, classification changes, related-article updates, and text corrections are recorded separately.
November 1, 2026: First published on this website.
November 2, 2026: Added article information, classification, topics, language navigation, related articles where the same case was confirmed, consultation guidance, and SEO. The original text and first-published date were preserved.
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