Trademark Registration in Japan for Foreign Ecommerce Brands

First to File, Not First to Use

Article 8(1) of the Trademark Act states that where two or more applications are filed on different days for identical or similar marks covering identical or similar goods or services, only the earliest applicant may register. Since an April 2024 amendment there is a narrow proviso — a later applicant may also register if it has the earlier applicant's consent and there is no likelihood of confusion — but consent is the earlier party's to give, which does not help a brand that has been beaten to the office.

Being known abroad is not, by itself, a defence. The Act does contain protections: Article 4(1)(x) blocks registration of a mark widely recognised among consumers in Japan as another's, and Article 4(1)(xix) blocks a mark widely recognised in Japan or abroad where the applicant files with an improper purpose — the provision aimed squarely at squatting. But Article 4(3) disapplies those grounds where the mark did not fall under them at the time of filing — so the recognition has to have existed already on the filing date, not merely by the time the case is heard. The question is not how well known you are now; it is how well known you were in the month someone else filed. For a brand that has done no Japanese trading, that evidence is thin, and assembling it is expensive litigation work rather than a form you submit.

This is why the risk shows up early in a market entry, before revenue justifies it. We have written about the downstream version of the same problem — taking back control when an unauthorised seller lists your brand covers enforcement once a grey-market seller is already trading, and Amazon's Brand Registry route in particular depends on being in the Japanese trademark system at all — a mark filed with or registered at the JPO, not a home-country registration. This article is the step before that: getting the registration in the first place. The relationship risk is covered separately in our comparison of handing Japan to a distributor versus running your own store, where who holds the Japanese trademark is one of the terms that decides how reversible the arrangement is.

What Registration Actually Costs

The JPO publishes its fee schedule as formulas, and both the application and the registration scale with the number of classes you claim. Amounts below are from the JPO's official fee table.

Three things follow from the shape of that table. First, a single-class registration is cheap — twelve thousand yen to file and just under thirty-three thousand to register is not a number that should delay a market entry decision. Second, classes are the cost driver, and they compound at renewal every ten years, so an over-broad filing is a recurring bill, not a one-off. Third, fighting costs an order of magnitude more than filing: a single-class non-use cancellation trial costs ¥55,000 in official fees alone, before any professional fees, against ¥12,000 to have filed first.

What the table does not include is professional cost. Article 75 of the Patent Attorney Act reserves paid representation before the JPO to registered patent attorneys (弁理士) and patent attorney corporations, with lawyers holding equivalent standing; for a foreign applicant, engaging one is effectively mandatory anyway, because Article 8 of the Patent Act — applied to trademarks by Article 77(2) of the Trademark Act — bars a party without a domicile, residence or business office in Japan from acting before the JPO except through an agent resident in Japan. Firms quote per case depending on class count, search scope and translation, so get quotes rather than relying on any figure repeated secondhand.

How Long It Takes, and How to Go Faster

The JPO's 2026 Annual Report reports fiscal 2025 averages of 6.6 months from trademark application to the first examination result, and 7.5 months from application to registration — both shorter than the previous year. The same report records 168,114 trademark applications in 2025 and a registration grant rate of 87.5%.

Accelerated examination can compress the front of that. The JPO's published outline states that the first examination result arrives on average about two months after the request, and that the request itself carries no fee. The basic condition is that you are already using the mark, or have made substantial preparations to use it, and one of three cases applies: you need the right urgently — which expressly includes a third party using your mark without permission, or your having filed for the same mark outside Japan; or you have designated only goods and services you actually use; or you have designated only goods and services drawn from the JPO's standard lists. The guideline was revised effective 1 October 2025, and the revised operation applies to applications filed on or after that date.

Two timing consequences matter for planning. Rights arise on registration, not on filing — Article 18(1) is explicit that a trademark right comes into effect upon registration of establishment. In the gap, Article 13-2 gives an applicant who has warned an infringer, showing the content of the pending application, a claim for compensation — but that claim can only be exercised after the right is registered. So the pending period is not a complete vacuum, and it is not protection either. If your Japanese launch date is fixed, count backwards from it: roughly seven to eight months on the normal track, or roughly three to four with accelerated examination, assuming no refusal to answer.

Two Routes In: Direct JPO Filing or the Madrid Protocol

A foreign brand has two mechanisms, and the choice is usually settled by how many countries you are filing in at once.

Direct national filing

You file at the JPO through a Japanese patent attorney. The application is drafted for Japanese practice from the start, including the Japanese-script forms of your mark you actually intend to use, and your agent handles any refusal directly. This is the route that gives the most control over specification wording, which matters because Japanese examination practice on goods and services descriptions is strict — in the third of the accelerated examination cases above, the one resting on the JPO's standard lists, the designated goods must match those lists exactly as written, and the JPO warns that even a stray character or punctuation mark disqualifies the request.

Madrid Protocol designation of Japan

If you already hold or have applied for the mark at home, your home office can file one international application designating Japan among other countries. Under Article 68-9 of the Trademark Act, a designation of Japan is deemed a Japanese trademark application as of the date of the international registration. Fees are paid to WIPO rather than the JPO: on top of WIPO's basic fee of 653 Swiss francs (903 where any reproduction of the mark is in colour), Japan charges an individual fee, listed by WIPO at 221 francs for one class plus 208 francs for each additional class, with renewal at 218 francs per class. Article 68-30(3) disapplies the ordinary Japanese registration-fee provisions for these cases, so you do not pay the ¥32,900-per-class registration fee on top. The JPO also notes that examination in each designated country is time-limited, to twelve or eighteen months, which makes the schedule more predictable than a national filing in some jurisdictions.

One trade-off is easy to miss: accelerated examination is not available on this route. The JPO's own list of applications excluded from accelerated examination and accelerated trial begins with international trademark applications under the Madrid Protocol designating Japan. (The same list excludes new types of marks and some three-dimensional marks, and — from accelerated examination only — applications relying on the consent system under Article 4(4).) So if speed in Japan specifically is what you are buying, the national route keeps an option the Madrid route closes.

One restriction catches brands out. Article 68-2 allows the JPO to act as office of origin only for Japanese nationals and for foreigners with a domicile, residence or business office in Japan. A brand without a Japanese presence therefore cannot route an international application through Tokyo; it files through its own home office and designates Japan. Whether you need a Japanese entity at all for the wider business is a separate question, covered in our piece on whether an overseas seller needs a Japanese entity.

As a rough rule: Madrid is efficient when Japan is one of several markets being filed together and your home mark is stable; direct national filing is better when Japan is the priority market, when your specification needs Japanese-specific drafting, or when you expect a refusal that will need local argument anyway. A refusal in a designated country still requires a local representative to answer, which is where the cost advantage of Madrid narrows.

Choosing Classes: The Decision That Costs Most Later

Article 6 requires one application per mark, designating the goods or services it will be used on, classified according to the classes fixed by cabinet order. The Trademark Act Enforcement Order's schedule runs to 45 classes — classes 1 to 34 for goods, 35 to 45 for services. Article 6(3) adds a caution worth internalising: the classes do not themselves define the scope of similarity. Two goods in different classes can still be judged similar; two in the same class may not be.

For an ecommerce brand the practical questions are these. The goods class is usually obvious — cosmetics, apparel, foodstuffs, electronics. Less obvious is whether to add class 35, which covers retail and wholesale services, if you intend to run your own Japanese storefront under the brand rather than only supply goods. And brands whose name travels in more than one script have to decide whether to file the Latin-alphabet form, the katakana form, a logo, or several — each mark is a separate application under Article 6, with its own fees.

Two failure modes pull in opposite directions. File too narrowly and you leave room for someone else to register the same name in an adjacent class you later need. File too broadly and you pay per class at registration and again at every renewal, while exposing unused classes to non-use cancellation under Article 50 after three years. There is no general right answer; the input is your actual Japanese product and channel plan, which is why this conversation belongs with your patent attorney and not with a checklist.

If Someone Has Already Filed

Assume nothing until you have had a search run. If a conflicting application or registration does exist, the options are time-boxed and they differ sharply in difficulty.

• Opposition — two months, and only two. Article 43-2 lets anyone file an opposition within two months of publication of the registration in the trademark gazette, on grounds including Articles 3, 4(1) and 8. Official fees are ¥3,000 plus ¥8,000 per class. The window is short and it does not reopen, which is a strong argument for watching the gazette once you know a market entry is coming.
• Invalidation on bad-faith grounds. Article 4(1)(xix) reaches a mark identical or similar to one widely recognised among consumers in Japan or abroad as another's, used with an improper purpose — defined in the Act as the purpose of obtaining unfair gain or causing damage to another. Remember Article 4(3): the ground does not apply unless the mark already fell under it at the filing date, so the case rests on what your brand's reputation demonstrably was then.
• Non-use cancellation after three years. Article 50 lets anyone request cancellation where neither the owner nor any licensee has used the registered mark in Japan on the designated goods or services for three consecutive years. Article 50(2) puts the burden on the registrant to prove use within the three years preceding registration of the request, which is why this route is often the most practical against a squatter who registered but never traded. Article 50(3) closes the obvious loophole of token use begun after the registrant learns a request is coming. Official fees are ¥15,000 plus ¥40,000 per class.
• Negotiation or purchase. Often the fastest path, and sometimes the only commercially sensible one. It is also the outcome a squatter is counting on, so it should be priced against the cost and probability of the routes above rather than against urgency.

All four are legal proceedings or legal negotiations. An ecommerce operator can tell you what the marketplace listings show and help you assemble commercial evidence of use; only a patent attorney or lawyer can run the case.

A Practical Sequence

1. Search before you publicise. Have a Japanese search run on your name and its likely Japanese-script forms, across the classes you plan to use and their neighbours. Do this before a Japanese press release, a trade show or a soft launch, because publicity is exactly what prompts an opportunistic filing.
2. Decide the mark forms. Latin script, katakana, logo — pick what you will actually use in Japanese listings and packaging. Each is a separate application; filing a form you never use invites a non-use problem later.
3. Pick the route. Japan-only or Japan-first, drafting-sensitive, or where you may want accelerated examination: file nationally. Japan as one of several simultaneous filings on a stable home mark: consider Madrid.
4. File before launch, not after. On the normal track, budget roughly seven to eight months to registration; roughly three to four if you qualify for accelerated examination and can evidence use or preparation.
5. Diarise the renewals. Article 19 sets a ten-year term from registration. Article 20(2) requires the renewal application in the window from six months before expiry to the expiry date; a late window exists but Article 43 adds a surcharge equal to the registration fee itself, and missing it entirely means the right is treated as having lapsed at expiry.
6. Keep evidence of use. Dated listing screenshots, packaging, invoices and advertising in Japan. This is what defends you in a non-use action and what supports an accelerated examination request — and it is a by-product of running the store properly, which is where an operator can help.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming a home registration covers Japan. It does not. Rights are national, and Japanese protection begins at Japanese registration under Article 18(1).
• Letting a distributor or reseller file "for convenience". Registration vests the right in the registrant. Unwinding that later is a legal proceeding, not a contract amendment — one of the reasons ownership terms matter when switching or exiting a Japanese agency arrangement.
• Filing only the Latin form. Japanese customers search and type in katakana. A mark you never registered in the script your customers use is a mark someone else can register.
• Over-claiming classes to be safe. Every class is paid for at registration and again each renewal, and unused classes are exposed to cancellation after three years.
• Registering and then pausing the store. A registration that goes unused in Japan for three consecutive years is vulnerable under Article 50 — which is one of the obligations that outlives a marketplace store you close.

Where LAUNOVA Fits

We state the boundary plainly. LAUNOVA is an ecommerce operations firm, not a patent attorney firm or a law firm. Article 75 of the Patent Attorney Act reserves paid representation in JPO proceedings to registered patent attorneys and patent attorney corporations, with lawyers holding equivalent standing, so we do not file, prosecute, oppose or advise on trademark applications, and we do not recommend particular outcomes on registrability. For that work you engage a 弁理士 or a lawyer directly.

What sits with us is the operating layer that decides whether a registered mark is actually worth anything: how your brand name and its Japanese-script form appear across listings, storefront and packaging; keeping that usage consistent across Amazon, Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping and your own store so the evidence of use exists when you need it; and coordinating with the firm handling your filing so the classes and mark forms match what you are really selling. If you are planning a Japanese launch, our guide to cross-border ecommerce into Japan sets out how the pieces fit together — tell us your brand, your channels and your launch date and we will scope the operating side. Pricing is quoted against the work rather than published as a rate card.