The expert committee recommends expansion of patentable subject matter by rewriting the examination manual

The expert committee recommends that each of the following category of the invention be a patentable subject matter.

1. A medicament characterized by a novel dose (amount per administration) and a novel usage (dosage interval).
2. A method of gathering data from human body in order to assist physicians provide diagnosis.

Note that this policy change is brought by rewriting of the examination manual, and hence, perhaps it will be applied to all the pending applications retrospectively. Several interested parties express concern about legal instability of the grant based on the new examination manual. Examination manual is just a internal standard of the Japanese Patent Office provided for the convenience of examiners and applicants. The court is not at all bound by the manual. They argue that such policy change for the patentable subject matter should be firmly legislated in the Patent Act.