Japan IP News

Separation of The Claims from The Specification

Under the current law, the "claims" section is stipulated to be a part of the specification (Article 36(3)).
In the PCT, however, the "claims" section is stipulated to be separate from the specification. WIPO will start to accept electronic filing of an application from March 2003. To conform the Japanese specification/claim format with the electronic application format to be used in WIPO ,the specification part and the "claims" part are separated from each other under the new law. This format is expected to be a common standard for electronic filing systems.