15 - The Life and Times of Patent No. 2,670

Summary

During the early years of the twentieth century, the 2,670th Japanese patent, issued to Mikimoto Kokichi in 1896 to cover a process to induce pearls inside living shellfish, sparked unprecedented domestic controversy. This chapter introduces two questions of legal demarcation that arose during trials over the patent, which together became one of the longest-running patent disputes in Meiji Japan (1868–1912): the geographic scope of novelty and the patentability of claims involving living creatures under Japanese law. Patent no. 2670 later became part of an alternative genealogy of biopatenting in Japan. Its active life highlighted concerns, similar to those voiced elsewhere in the world, over the proper place of monopoly patents in Japan’s early years of international patent integration.