Top �� What's up around the Prime Minister �� June, 2002

Fourth Meeting of the Strategic Council on Intellectual Properties Friday, June 14, 2002 The fourth meeting of the Strategic Council on Intellectual Properties was held at the Prime Minister's Official Residence. At the meeting, the members of the Council compiled the "Outline for Intellectual Property Strategy" (Draft), which is a comprehensive policy toward achieving the goal of making Japan a nation that is built on the platform of intellectual properties. The draft version of the Outline incorporates 55 measures for the Government to work on until FY2005, including the introduction of a system to evaluate the performance of university instructors based on their acquisition of patents, enhancing measures to counter industrial espionage and efforts against illegal copies, and the creation of specialized graduate schools, all of which are in line with the four pillars of creating, protecting and applying intellectual properties, and human resource development. Furthermore, the members of the Council agreed to reorganize the current system, under which each ministry and agency takes an independent approach, and to establish a Strategic Headquarters, as part of the cross-sectional reform spanning all ministries and agencies as part of a focused systemic review, in addition to propose the adoption of the "Basic Law on Intellectual Properties (provisional name)" by next year's Ordinary Session of the Diet. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi closed the meeting by saying, "I have great expectations for the final version of the "Outline for Intellectual Property Strategy" to be compiled at the next meeting. Based on today's discussion, I would like you to compile the Outline in a way that Japanese people can easily understand."