Tokyo District Court, Case No. 2024 (Wa) 70478
Updated: Oct 14
Article information
Article type: Case note
Display and classification checked: 2026-09-30
Categories: Patents
Topics: Inventive step / Motivation and teaching away / Public prior use
Published on this website: 2026-09-29
Tokyo District Court, Case No. 2024 (Wa) 70478
[Monitoring system] (Presiding Judge Takahashi)
Inventive step denied, with "GPS BoT," the plaintiff's own publicly worked invention, as the primary reference.
(Translation of the quoted judgment)
"The invention in Exhibit Otsu 38 (GPS BoT) is one in which a terminal carried by a person being monitored transmits location information at timings corresponding to interval information and transmits remaining battery level information at unknown timings, while the technical matter at issue is a technology in which a terminal carried by a protected person simultaneously transmits location information and remaining battery level information. Therefore, the invention in Exhibit Otsu 38 and the technical matter at issue have the common problem of setting the timings for transmitting location information and remaining battery level information, and have common operations and functions in that, in both, a terminal carried by a person being monitored or protected transmits location information and remaining battery level information.
Furthermore, although location information is transmitted according to interval information in the invention in Exhibit Otsu 38, the timing at which remaining battery level information is transmitted is unknown. It can therefore be said that a person skilled in the art who encounters that invention has a motivation to combine it with the technical matter at issue, namely transmitting remaining battery level information simultaneously with location information, as regards the timing of transmission of remaining battery level information, and no factor discouraging the combination is found."
Originally posted on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7509874797342781440/
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This log starts on 30 September 2026. Display and classification checks are distinct from a review of the legal analysis.
2026-09-30 — Presentation update: added the article type, this change log and a link to consultation options. The existing article text was preserved.
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