"Counter value of invention"

On January 30th 2004, Tokyo District Court issued a judgment over a lawsuit filed by Mr.Shuji Nakamura, the professor at the University of California Santa Barbara school, who put the blue light emitting diode (Light Emitting Diode) in practical use for the first time in the world asking for a payment of 20 billion yen against Nichia-Kagaku, which he worked till 1999, as a part of counter value for the patent right property transfer. Presiding Judge Ryoichi Mimura recognized 60,400 million yen as the counter value of invention and ordered Nichia-Kagaku to pay 20 billion yen, which is equal to the half of the profits, which Nichia-Kagaku obtained by patent monopoly, with the comment that "He invented blue Light Emitting Diode by himself without substantial technical background and assistance of the company.

This is an epoch-making judgment in some sense. In Japan, where seniority-based vertical society and lifetime employment system is considered as a norm, it is rare that an employee asks for a direct remuneration from the achievement he made. However, writer cannot but bear a question against this judgment individually. The first reason is a problem to an employee's fairness. For example, this case is a privilege granted uniquely to the engineers. Often in the case of sales people of liberal arts, even if one concludes big dealings with a major customer by building epoch-making finance scheme and a business model, while such result may be taken into account in the form of promotion, there are few possibilities to ask for half of the profits as a counter value and company accept it.
The second reason is the problem of the validity of the amount of money.
Although judgment considered this case as "the rare example that carried out global invention under the poor environment without accumulation of technical information or support" The fundamental misapprehension is that he achieved this invention at least under the stable environment of lifetime employment's system in the company without considering any risks to his income. If Professor Nakamura is the contracted employee and updates an employment agreement annually based on achievements temporarily, I would have no objection against him to obtain a suitable remuneration. However, although Professor Nakamura fortunately succeeded with such an invention, most of the cases are finished with failure. Therefore, considering the situation that the company guarantees the life of engineers with their own risk all the while there is no guarantee that they can obtain a worthy return from the research, it will be appropriate to the result of invention of an employee to conclude that the property belongs to the organization.

The notion often referred as a standard for many Japanese's value judgment, including the media, is the misapprehension that American engineers gain an immense return to one's invention just as Professor Nakamura. However even in the U.S., which is far from having a sustained lifetime employment system, employee's right is stipulated in the agreement with a company, and the result of invention of an employee is common regarded as the property of the company. It is expected that Nichia-Kagaku will most likely file an appeal, and then it would be certainly interesting to observe the rulings of the Supreme Court.

Key Word

English	Japanese	English	Japanese
Tokyo District Court		privilege
lawsuit		accumulation
blue light emitting diode		fundamental
counter value		misapprehension
presiding judge		enviroment
monopoly		contracted employee
substantial		notion
epoch		immense
vertical		sustained
norm		stipulate
remuneration		Supreme Court
achievement