ABSTRACT
Japanese patents have a formidable reputation because of the language barrier for most Westerners. A less obvious problem is the problem of numeration. This chapter is about ways of finding and using the published materials to obtain information and is written primarily for the Westerner with little or no understanding of Japanese or of patent publications. It is a reworking of the Japanese chapter from the book Introduction to Patents Information1 with some additional material and does not pretend to cover the entire field, which is complicated enough for Western patents, let alone Japanese. Ideally, expert advice or searching should be requested. Even so, a little effort can reveal a great deal of technical and business information even for someone who does not know any Japanese.
