Inventor vengeance: Japan's top inventors go to court.

NESTLED among the glitz of the world's wealthiest investment banks and most expensive hotels, the polished granite exterior of Doctor Yoshiro NakaMats's Innovation Institute looks like a thousand other glittering Tokyo facades. Gleaming plaques direct visitors along a corridor to a futuristic elevator, which noiselessly conveys them to the penthouse floor.

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IN SECONDS, THE ILLUSION of state-of-the-art glamour is replaced with the sort of cheap knockabout surrealism that's always good for a laugh in the old Road Runner cartoons: "World's No. 1 Inventor," proclaims a sign glued to a battered wooden door.

A knock on this enticing portal brings the inventor's faithful assistants shuffling along to open it. Inside is a terrifyingly messy cross between Q's laboratory, Frankenstein's workshop and Armageddon waged only with scraps of paper. Beyond a low wall made of cardboard boxes and stacks of yellowing magazines, the top of the great man's head is barely visible. He is busy, and the visitor is invited to explore Dr. NakaMats's domain until the inventor is ready.

This is the lair of a man regarded by some as the greatest scientist on earth. He holds the record for the largest number of personally held patents, which at more than 3,000 eclipses the famous holder of the No. 2 spot, Thomas Edison. He has won the Inventors' Grand Prix a record 50 times and has a prodigious number of honorary fellowships at universities across the globe. He is a regular figure on Japanese television, and is occasionally mobbed in the street.

NakaMats's vast collection of patents has suddenly thrust him into the very center of an acrimonious public debate on Japanese intellectual property. In late January, the Tokyo District Court created widespread corporate panic when it ordered a technology company to pay [Ren]20 billion to a former employee who invented the blue LED "all by himself." An editorial in the Nikkei Shimbun gravely reported that "few doubt the enormity of the implications the court decision will have" for corporate Japan.

The Japanese government, as worried as the many corporations affected by the ruling, has frenziedly set about reworking the rules on intellectual property. Japan is hugely inventive--eight of the world's top ten companies ranked by number of patent applications last year were Japanese. The trick is to harness that talent in a way that doesn't trigger a stampede of litigation.

The experience of Dr. NakaMats, who sells ideas to the highest bidders, has become of great interest to corporate Japan.

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Years before assuming his more cosmopolitan stage title, Yoshiro Nakamatsu, a top engineering student, proved his flair for invention. As a small child he came up with the design for a plastic hand pump that is still sold across the world. While still a student, he began research that led to his invention of the 3.5-inch computer floppy disc--the royalties from which have kept him a very rich man.

It is immediately obvious that NakaMats's chaotic cavern plays the triple roles of gadget test center, sales room and self-tribute museum. Facing the entrance is a cluttered stand with some of his culinary inventions. Dr. NakaMats's Brain Drink, for example, is his patented health formula that promises anyone with a teapot the twin benefits of weight loss and "Yummy Nutri Brain." The packet design (also his patent) suggests that purchasers look at themselves in the reflective surface and then flex it to show how easily their faces can go from portly to pert. The back of the packet provides an early hint of the staggering narcissism to follow: A brief resume of Dr. NakaMats includes the information that he was once "selected as one of the most expensive 12 speakers in the world."

At the middle of the stand is a tiny bottle of Love Jet, another of his inventions and his latest bestseller. The tiny, unambiguously boxed spray promises the same general effects as Viagra, but boasting the considerable advantages of working instantaneously and being topically applied. For doubters of its astonishing powers, Dr. NakaMats provides a baffling "formula of sexual sensitivity." Confusing mathematical symbols abound, but the gist is supplied alongside: The square root of BxM, for example, refers to "ugly degree of body shape."

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A sideways scramble down a diploma-lined passage takes one past the smudged porthole of "Research Lab No. 3." Inside, a fearsome-looking easy chair has had its headrest altered so that thousands of electrical wires splay out towards the spot where its occupant's head would be.

At the end of the passage is a room crammed with Dr. NakaMats's inventions through the ages. There is his design for the first ever crop-dusting equipment, along with the machinery that first made music sampling possible. There is the golf club that revolutionized putting in the 80s, and crammed atop a buckled metal cabinet are several boxes of his patented "Flying Shoes"--boots with springs on the bottom that sparked a short-lived Tokyo craze about ten years ago. Other devices include the mysterious "Antigravity Float Vibrate 3D Sonic System."

Photographs of the good doctor with astronauts, academics and adorers adorn the walls. There are certificates dating from when IBM bought 14 of his patents, a case with copies of his many popular self-help books and even a history of his life by a famous Japanese cartoonist.

None of this bedlam fully prepares one for the confusion of Dr. NakaMats's office itself. It is like the hobby room of a cranky uncle, but with a pinstriped city-slicker beaming out from a leather chair at the center. Behind him is an ice-skating boot perched on four wheels and apparently powered by a fuel cell of his devising. To its right is a magnificent painting of an inventors' theme park he is planning to construct outside Tokyo. Strewn across his desk are his favorite inventions: gizmos and gadgetry that include, of course, the now-iconic floppy disc.

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Pride of place on the desk is given to a small statue of Archimedes sitting in his bath--a joke that plays on Dr. NakaMats's famous talent for coming up with his greatest ideas while swimming. The statue was presented by a caucus of Russian scientists who, in compiling a list of history's greatest scientists, put him on a par with Faraday and Curie.

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Dr. NakaMats may be a 75-year-old boffin, but he does not take prisoners when he talks. He knows he is academically gifted and has also worked hard to hone his scientific skills. "People have now got the image of inventors as some sort of street scientist. Not so well-educated, but a man of crazy ideas. His clothes are tattered and dirty and he is basically the sort of inventor we see in Back To The Future movies. People look at these people and think of them as abnormal, or just laugh. I'm not like that at all. I studied engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, which is the most difficult place to enter. And then I went to law school because real invention should be done with a knowledge of scientific and non-scientific matters."

He does his own work without assistance, does not think highly of other inventors around the world, living or dead, and does not appear to doubt his talents for a second. He takes the trouble to explain how, having won his university place against 12,000 applicants, he never missed a single lecture, displaying a fully-stamped attendance card to prove this.

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Asked to identify the greatest inventor ever, Dr. NakaMats immediately points to a vast portrait of his mother. It dominates the room, and her memory dominates much of his conversation and written output. In a self-authored book called "The legend of Dr. NakaMats's inventions," a section of poems and pictures is devoted to her, along with the admission: "Dr. NakaMats has not accepted death of mother."

"I write books for people so they can understand how I do this, but the basic spirit of invention is love. I studied from my mother and this was what she taught me. My first invention--this pump--I designed when I was a small boy during the war. It was so cold that my mother's hands were shaking and she could not pour the soy sauce from one bottle to another, so I invented the pump out of love for my mother. Now I do everything with that spirit. Toyota, Mercedes, they are trying to design fuel cells because of the money--I am doing it out of love for the environment."

After a second's thought, he adds the Love Jet spray to this list. He explains that his formula may have the effect of promoting more fertility among Japanese, and thus reversing the long and worrying decline in the country's birth-rate. "Love, you see, love for my people!" he bellows with an emphatic thump on the desk.

It is soon clear that Dr. NakaMats is not a man who relishes gray areas. Gesticulating violently, he dismisses outright the suggestion that he has ever failed at anything. He hates the idea of borrowing money, and claims that his businesses have always been self-sufficient. He deplores the state of Japanese education, sadly describing a process of intellectual "levelling down."

He adds that it was his desire to change the education system that drew him to politics. Many Japanese remember with a smirk Dr. NakaMats's failed campaigns to run for mayor of Tokyo. The subject is decidedly delicate.

"In this world, there are visible inventions and invisible inventions. As an inventor of great intelligence, I think I can come up with both. The invention of politics will be an invisible one. There are many stupid people involved in Japanese politics, and I want to clean that all up. The present education system hates genius, I would encourage it. I would do it all in the sprit of love."

Asked what he is currently working on, Dr. NakaMats roughly shoves some papers aside to reveal a white cardboard model house. This, he explains, is the patented Dr. NakaMats Home--the product of many reinventions of the norms of construction. He opens a drawer to reveal the blueprints, crafted in his own tidy hand. The sprawling abode is currently half-built, but he is greatly looking forward to being the "marmot" that tests it. Inside are two special rooms--one "calm", one "dynamic"--that are critical to the invention process.

As a parting shot, he fires out what is perhaps the oddest contention of the day: "I'm going to live to 144 years old," he grins. "I have redone my body. I eat one meal a day, I don't drink or smoke, and I lift 35.5 tons in heavy mass training. I think walking or jogging is bad for the brain, so I do not recommend it and prefer swimming. I sleep in a special chair of my own invention that allows me to sleep only four hours per night.

"Oh, and I always drink this," he says, pushing over a steaming cup of brain drink.

RELATED ARTICLE: JAPANESE INVENTORS STRIKE BACK

Corporate Japan is braced for an "unstoppable flood" of lawsuits brought by the scientific brains behind the country's economic miracle. In an exclusive JI interview, Japan's leading intellectual property legal expert predicts an explosion of cases based on the inventions that made the likes of NEC, Sony and Canon so wealthy in the 80s and beyond.

A spate of successful cases has corporations trembling.

By Leo Lewis 

Professor Katsuya Tamai of Tokyo University added that after decades of out-of-court negotiations and discreet settlements, Japan has finally developed a taste for litigation and courtroom battles.

He also confirmed that the Japanese government's two-year-old campaign to triple the country's number of law students (see JI, August 2003) was having an effect far sooner than many imagined: "Until now, there weren't so many lawyers, so the competition between them was not so fierce," he said. "Now there are lots more, so lawyers are finding that they need to develop new business areas. Intellectual property disputes are going to be the one area they all come to because of the opportunities." A recent flurry of three high-profile cases has ended in giant payouts--one worth more than [Ren]20 billion--for inventors suing their former employers. In a [Ren]1 billion suit filed in March, the electronics giant Toshiba became the latest high-profile victim of the so-called "researchers' revolt."

In 1987, Fujio Masuoka, a former Toshiba researcher who is now a professor at Tohoku University, was the brains behind the globally standard Flash memory system used in digital cameras and mobile phones. Last year, sales of the memory chip soared to more than [Ren]1 trillion, and Masuoka is determined to get his share of the spoils. Masuoka is conscious that his suit and those likely to emerge in the future are gutting the old "Japan Inc" mentality that served the country so well during its era of growth. He believes that the researchers' revolt represents the last nail in the coffin of the old Japanese corporate ethic, where all employees pulled together for the good of the company and the wider economy. In a recent poll of Japanese chief executives, nearly 50 percent said that the suits sent the worrying message that individual achievement is more important than teamwork--thus shattering a longstanding Japanese taboo.

"I think we are in for a flood of this sort of case," says Peter Godwin, a partner at Herbert Smith Japan. "The sort brought by any Japanese employee who has ever wondered whether he has been fairly remunerated for a particular invention. Some companies will prefer to settle, but with very large claims--of the sort that could force a company into bankruptcy--the cases will be fought tooth and nail. There is a real sense of panic among corporations. Many are terrified that a string of claims could emerge."

The cases so far have focused on inventions as diverse as optical discs and artificial sweetener, but have several factors in common. All have been brought by scientists whose inventions went on to make their companies millions of yen, and each plaintiff argued that their compensation was inadequate. The cases exploit the vagueness of Japanese intellectual property law, and the lack of relevant case law.

"Companies will start treating inventors better," says Tamai. "But they will also have the incentive to move their research bases overseas. Japan could lose its large number of inventors in cutting edge industries."

In late February, Ajinomoto was ordered to pay [Ren]189 million to a former employee for the transfer of patents relating to Aspartame, the artificial sweetener. A few days later, Nichia Corporation was hit with Japan's biggest ever court demand for compensation relating to an invention. In both cases, the plaintiffs were victims of vague employment laws, and exploited by even vaguer intellectual property laws.

Under Japanese law an employee retains the patent rights for his inventions until they are transferred to that employer. In order to make that transfer, the law demands that the inventor must be "reasonably compensated." What constitutes "reasonable" depends both on the projected profits on the invention and the professional contribution the employee made. In the past, companies have left the decision on both these factors to the discretion of the company bosses. Because those guidelines are so ill-defined, inventors have discovered how easily they can argue that their original compensation was unreasonable.

In the Nichia case, the inventor's original fee for patent transfer was just 0.0000017 percent of the profits made on the blue LED, which transformed the electronics industry.

As Tamai explains: "The Japanese employee/inventor relationship is very similar to the German system. But the German system is precisely defined and has plenty of guidelines, case histories and case commentaries to work with. To some extent, you can predict the result of litigation in Germany before it starts, so it does not take place. Japan is very different--there are no guidelines, very few cases and no good commentary. The Japanese system is quite stupid."

The Japanese government is rushing to pass an amendment to the existing patent law before the end of the current parliamentary session. But legal experts believe Japanese companies should focus on employment contracts.

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The three big cases to date:

January 29, 2004

Tokyo High Court 

Hitachi ordered to pay [Ren]162 million to Seiji Yonezawa

Invention: Optical disc reader, the key to DVD players.

January 30, 2004

Tokyo District Court

Nichia Corporation ordered to pay [Ren]20 billion to Shuji Nakamura

Invention: the blue LED, critical component of the next generation of lights.

February 24, 2004

Tokyo District Court

Ajinomoto ordered to pay [Ren]189 million to Masayoshi Naruse

Invention: Aspartame, the world's most popular artificial sweetener (1982).