I read a story in yesterday's Nikkei Shimbun (on the front page, no less), about the fact that Japan has surpassed Germany in number of international patent applications (I'm not sure about patents issued, but it's a fair guess that they've surpassed Germany there as well). Japan had something like 15,000, and the number for the first half of this year was 30% over the same period last year. The U.S. is way out ahead with something in the neighborhood of 40,000.

The article was also interesting in that it mentioned a number of times that Japan is now focusing on moving to strengthening its intellectual property from its traditional strength in manufacturing. The vast majority of patents are still for automobile and electronics products, but others are continuing to rise slowly.