2023 (Gyo-Ke) 10034 [Method of Manufacturing a Raised-Pile Sheet] <Hibiku Shimizu>
Updated: 6 hours ago
Article information
Article type: Case note
Category: Patents
Topics: Creators and inventors
First published on this website: 2026-11-01
Display and classification checked: November 2, 2026
Originally published on Ameblo: 2025-06-16 (Japan time). Full English translation.
2023 (Gyo-Ke) 10034 [Method of Manufacturing a Raised-Pile Sheet] <Hibiku Shimizu>
B developed the imparting of raised-pile properties through steaming and drying, the characteristic part of the invention, so the defendant's application was a usurped application filed without the right to obtain a patent.
*In courtroom disputes over usurped applications, the results of witness examination have a major influence!!
(Excerpts from the court's reasoning)
…The changes in the allegations and statements greatly affect the very problem addressed by the invention, the need for it and its creative process. If A were truly the inventor, it would be hardly conceivable for those accounts to change in this manner merely through faulty recollection or the like.
Furthermore, …Shinei Senshoku initially outsourced the steaming process and performed it in-house from 2007 at the latest. The defendant's previous allegation that Shinei Senshoku formerly “did not perform a steaming process” therefore cannot be accepted as fact.
Moreover, the defendant's allegations would mean that Shinei Senshoku's former dyeing process did not include presetting. Yet A's account of trial and error concerning presetting was that he experimented with its position in the sequence, without explaining why presetting was introduced. This suggests that the presetting process already existed and A was experimenting solely with its order. Further, the conditions A described trying for steaming were “steam at 90°C for zero, thirty, sixty and 120 minutes,” which do not match the specification's description of “steaming at 95–110°C for two to three hours” ([0022]). In examination during the trial proceedings, A made statements premised on never having kept an invention notebook himself …. This must be regarded as wholly unnatural for an inventor supposedly engaged in repeated trial and error.
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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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