[Patents / Employee Inventions] Osaka District Court, 2020 (Wa) 12017
更新日：2 日前
Article information
Article type: Case note
Category: Patents
Topics: Employee inventions, Creators and inventors
First published on this website: 2026-11-01
Display and classification checked: November 2, 2026
Originally published on Ameblo: 2025-07-08 (Japan time). Full English translation.
[Patents / Employee Inventions] Osaka District Court, 2020 (Wa) 12017
*Because making an orally disintegrating (OD) tablet was the characteristic part of the invention, the plaintiff, who was involved in that work, was an inventor.
The company had already converted a formulation containing a different ingredient into an OD tablet, but because that was not the formulation of the invention at issue, it did not affect inventorship.
(Excerpt from the court's reasoning)
The plaintiff recognized problems associated with taking the originator drug L capsules and similar products and investigated the greater demand for OD tablets than for capsules. The plaintiff then conceived the development of OD tablets, namely orally disintegrating tablets of ambroxol hydrochloride, investigated other companies' products and conducted technical studies, and proposed their development at a PJ meeting. … The plaintiff attended every PJ meeting up to the meeting to select the next development candidates, participated in preliminary feasibility experiments concerning conversion to OD tablets, gave a certain degree of concrete form to the feasibility of microparticle coating, and ultimately obtained formal development approval at that selection meeting.
Accordingly, the plaintiff … can be said to have conceived the characteristic part of Invention 2 at issue. The plaintiff is therefore found to be an inventor of Invention 2 on this basis alone.
In response, the defendant argues, among other things, that the defendant itself had already been selling an ambroxol hydrochloride capsule formulation; that the idea of changing its dosage form to OD tablets was easy to conceive; that this point cannot be called the characteristic part of the invention; and that conceiving it therefore does not make the plaintiff an inventor of Invention 2 at issue.
Although the prior art includes examples of conversion from capsules to OD tablets (such as Takepron), they do not concern ambroxol hydrochloride, the same ingredient as in Invention 2 at issue. Nor is there any indication that, before the plaintiff's proposal, the defendant had specifically considered improving the previously marketed product into OD tablets. Accordingly, the facts asserted by the defendant do not alter the above findings concerning the characteristic part or, on that basis, the plaintiff's inventorship, and the defendant's argument cannot be accepted.
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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.
