ABSTRACT
Being a country of sparse national resources, Japan had to rely on entrepreneurial ingeniousness and the promotion of inventive efforts through intellectual property rights. Institutional control of intellectual property policy has been particularly important for Japan in the field of international technology transfer. The intellectual property system of Korea is closest to the Japanese not merely because of geographical proximity, but also because of Japanese colonisation between 1908 and 1945. As in Japan, the Ministry of Trade and Industry is responsible for shaping not only industrial policy, but also industrial property. From 1985, China put enormous efforts into developing an intellectual property system. While Taiwan overhauled her intellectual property system between 1992 and 1996, a similar preference for administrative enforcement and lack of proper judicial control can be found. Due to the fact that registering patents in the United Kingdom was unattractive to domestic industry, Singapore revamped much of its industrial property system in 1995.
