Actualities and Issues of Intellectual Property Right Education in Japan

In 2002, the Japanese Government declared the national goal to prosper with “Intellectual Property” (IP) and announced the strategy for intellectual property. However, IP education in National Colleges of Technology (KOSEN) lags behind especially in the respect of training IP teachers. Also, the curriculum created by the Patent Office does give us a thorough explanation on the legal system, but no introduction of how to invent new products. In this paper, the current situations of IP education in Japan will be discussed from three aspects: first, the development of the governmental policy in IP education, second, the problems in IP education at KOSEN, and third, some methods used in IPR lectures at Miyakonojo KOSEN.