Kind Regards
Chri
http://www.aboutmen.it/

� In a litigation directed to the infringement of a patent right or exclusive license, where denying the material allegation made by a patentee or an exclusive licensee to the effect that an act of infringement is committed with reference to an article or process, the other party shall clarify his relevant act in concrete manner. However, this provision shall not apply when the other party has an adequate reason for preventing him from disclosing the same.�

As you can see, this provision does not shift entire burdens of proof to the defendants. Right holders still bear the initial burdens of proof. According to the Commentary to the amended Patent Law (also available only in Japanese), right holders may meet their burdens by specifying an article or process to the extent, (1) that such an article or process may be reasonably distinguishable from other articles or process, and (2) that one can compare elements of both patented invention and the alleged article or process so as to determine the infringement issue. Thereafter, the burdens would be shifted to the denying defendants. Moreover, the expected amendment will basically cover civil procedure, not criminal procedure. As far as civil procedure is concerned, you may also bear in mind that Japanese civil procedure system has no discovery process that the US has. Consequently, I do not think that it would be fair to say that the expected amendment means that �you�re guilty until proven innocent.� Nonetheless, you can still oppose the amendment, arguing that it may �enhance the copyright holder protection� more than under the current law. However, it may not be so extreme as you thought initially.

On the other hand, the expected copyright term extension is worth noting because the extension may be applicable only to movies (including games). Harmonization argument seems to have been invoked, but if it is the case, it is hard to explain why other works will not be entitled to enjoy the term extension. It seems to me that the motive lying behind the harmonization argument may be to further increase international competitiveness of some, not all, of movies such as animation and games that are relatively competitive today. Again, it may be familiar to you as is the argument that Hollywood is an important exporting industry. However, one big difference is that, unlike in the US, the Japanese Constitution has no provision corresponding to �Copyright Clause� in the US Constitution. So once the draft bill is passed through the Diet, it is highly unlikely to challenge its constitutionality later. Thus, people in Japan really have to think about it right now. I am in favor of Judge Posner�s suggestion to consider term renewal system instead of automatic term extension. Ironically, we may have to reevaluate pre-1976 US copyright system as one of models in 21st Century.