Heisei 16 (Wa) No. 10431 — Design infringement litigation
Updated: Oct 9
Article information
Article type: Case note
Category: Designs
Topics: Litigation procedure
First published on this site: 2026-10-10
Display/classification checked: 2026-10-10
Heisei 16 (Wa) No. 10431 — Design infringement litigation
*The court recognized the reliability of the Wayback Machine.
(Excerpt from the judgment, translated)
The US nonprofit Internet Archive began collecting the worldwide Web in 1996 and made its archive publicly available through the Wayback Machine in 2001, by which time it comprised a vast collection of 100 terabytes and more than 16 million sites. The guidelines governing international searches and international preliminary examinations of PCT applications at WIPO identify the archive as one means of determining the publication date of information published on a website. Moreover, [...] the defendant’s website as of December 9, 2003, added “Design registration applied for” to photographs of Defendant’s Products 1 and 2, whereas the website as of February 27, 2003, did not. This is consistent with the application history of the design right, for which the application was filed on May 22, 2003. These facts establish that the collected contents and dates indicated by the archive are sufficiently reliable.
Original article (2025-08-27):
Update history
This history records actual publication, display, and classification changes made on this site.
2026-10-10: First published the LinkedIn original on this site and set the classification, article information, and consultation link.
2026-10-10: Aligned the translation link, canonical URL and hreflang with the verified public URLs.
2026-10-10: Updated topic tags. The original article text was not changed.
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