The government intellectual property
agency has proposed an “IP Vision.” It summarizes the past 10 years of strategy
and sets the strategy for the next 10 years. As chairman, I was responsible for
coordinating this project.
In the beginning I wanted to talk
about the importance of intellectual property to Japan and to outline the
priorities contained in the proposal. The message would be called, “The
importance of taking a global leadership role in intellectual property.”
For Japan to take a favorable position
in this era of globalization with no natural resources and no access to cheap
labor there is little choice but to rely on the production of intellectual
property.
I wanted it to sink in that of all the
country’s policies, the policy regarding intellectual property was of utmost
importance.
The intellectual property strategy
must be one of the pillars of the nation’s policies, right alongside national
defense and education. In terms of industrial policy, it’s more important than
agricultural or commercial policy. Even in TPP negotiations, it’s important to
recognize that the IP field is essential to the future of Japan. I wanted to
make those points as strongly as possible.
In regard to these three points, I set
three paths.
1)
Policy Reform
The top subject
consisted of the promotion of three areas: user-created content, sharing and
education, and big data. Ten years ago, the content policy was centered on the
entertainment business, but for the next ten years it should address issues
that involve the citizenry as a whole. Not only content produced by
professionals, content made by everyone will take the lead.
Japan’s strong point is everyone’s
power; children and adults working creatively to produce movie and music. I
want our policies to boost this. I’d like to describe the steps we made to
improve the computerization of education. I lead the Association of Digital
Textbooks & Teaching, and those involved were very interested. However, the
dedication of the government is in question. At the same time, we concentrated
on expanding the creation and use of content. The expansion of the content
industry has great repercussions on industry as a whole. It’s necessary to widen our field of
vision with a GDP of 470 trillion yen, a 12 trillion yen content industry and
an 85 trillion yen IT industry.
2) Raising Priorities
I clarified the manner in which
resources would be allocated and prioritized. It is important to raise the
priority of intellectual property strategy in the whole national policy. We needed
to move from an agricultural and industrial society to an information society.
It’s a thesis one might expect to hear from an elementary school student, but
our policies were reversed for some reason. In a country without natural
resources we have no choice but to rely on wisdom, and I wanted to reflect the
importance of that in our policies.
3)
Development of Promotion Systems
Government must be
unified in creating an all-encompassing promotion system. By getting eight
government offices to the table to brainstorm measures we were able to advance
cooperation. I think that this is a great achievement. What’s more, the “Cool
Japan Promotional Council” has been established, along with the “Pop-Culture
Subcommittee Meeting” that I was in charge of, and it’s important that we
coordinate our policies.
Further cooperation is required. Of
course it’s being discussed at the IT strategy division, but it’s natural that hardware
and software should be thought of as a single unit. The nineties was the era of
“Wintel” (Windows and Intel) and a time when hardware and software were
divided, but recently we see the unification by Apple of the iPhone and iTunes;
the advancement of Google’s strategy with web and Android; and Amazon’s assault
with the Kindle. Japan must shape a strategy that considers the unification of
IT and intellectual property as well.
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