As detailed in the news below, effective April 1, 2023, the Japan Patent Office has relaxed the restoration requirements for relief for missed deadlines, changing the restoration requirement from “Due Care” to “Unintentional”.
It is said that the approval rate of recovery was 10-20% before the requirements for recovery were relaxed, but we are confident that many Japanese patent attorneys feel that the number of cases in which requests are granted has increased significantly in current practice.
As mentioned in the above article, when making a request for restoration, the applicant must submit a Statement of Reasons for Restoration and pay the prescribed fee within the prescribed period. In the statement of reasons for restoration, the applicant is required to state “the reason why the procedure could not be completed within the prescribed period” and so on. Many people may have questions about what to write in this reason.
Unfortunately, the JPO has not yet published examples of what reasons should be stated, but conversely, it has published the following examples that are considered undesirable. The following cases are disclosed by the JPO as examples in which the reason for missing the deadline may be judged as “intentional failure to follow the procedures” and relief may not be granted.
When considering what to include in your Statement of Reasons for Restoration, we strongly recommend you to refer to the following unfavorable examples as statements to avoid.
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