Have a Break

How do you usually pay? In cash or use cashless payment?
I made a debut in cashless payment this year and started using it regularly. I’ve used credit cards before, but only for expensive purchases and online shopping.

Cashless payment is not only limited to credit cards, but also various methods such as using a transportation IC card and payments with smartphones. Among them, I mainly use QUICPay.

One of the reasons I chose QuickPay is that I can pay with my smartphone.
It’s easy to set up and you can use it just by registering your credit card information in the Apple Wallet on your iPhone.
For a person like me, who always carries an iPhone, the condition of QUICPay which allows smartphone payments suited me well.

As with QUICPay and other cashless payments, it makes a sound when the payment is completed. For example, when you pass through a ticket gate with a transportation IC card, you will hear a beep. If you use QUICPay in the same way, you will hear “QuickPay” sound.

Every time I use QUICPay I hear it, and because I work on intellectual property industry, I thought, “Maybe its sound trademark application has been filed or even it has been registered”, so I looked it up with J Plat-Pat.
Then, JCB Co., Ltd. filed an application in July of this year. (Japanese trademark application No. 2021-85332)
The article on the trademark title says, “This trademark consists of a structure that you can hear an electronic voice saying “Quick pay”, and the total length of the sound is about 1 second.”.

I would like to continue using cashless payment while thinking that it is a payment method that fit with the times of our generation. (Rabbit)

QUICPayご利用ガイド｜QUICPay (How to use QUICPay (Japanese only))
J-Plat Pat QUICPay Sound Trademark

Earlier this month, I went to see the training ships “Nippon Maru” and “Kaiwo Maru” that entered the port of Nagoya.
This was the first time in four years that the two ships entered the port at the same time, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the Nagoya Port Management Association.
I thought it would be spectacular to see the ships with their sails unfurled up close, but I was a little disappointed when I arrived at Nagoya Port to find that there would be no sails unfurled during the port call.
However, even without the sails, it was spectacular!

L=Nippon Maru,R=Kaiwo Maru

The Kaiwo Maru was not on display, so I could not see it from the side, but I was able to get a closer look at the Nippon Maru, which is so big that it would be difficult to capture them together in a frame unless you were very far away.

The two ships that stopped at the port are both second generation, the first having been retired and now preserved at the Nippon Maru Memorial Park in Yokohama Port and the Kaiwomaru Park in Toyama New Port, respectively. The Nippon Maru is designated as a national important cultural property.

A search on J-PlatPat yielded several hits for the trademarks “Sailing Ship Nippon Maru” and “Kaiwo Maru”. They are owned by a foundation that operates and manages the park that preserves the first sailing ship.

Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy, but it was neither too hot nor too cold, just a nice day to enjoy the sea breeze.
The Nagoya Marine Riders, who came to watch the Nippon Maru from the ocean side, also made an appearance. (Cacao)

JMETS (jmets.j-server.com)
How to get to the English page of the website
Click on the link (this will open the Japanese website)
Click “Foreign Languages” on the top left
Choose the language (English)

English – 帆船日本丸・横浜みなと博物館 (nippon-maru.or.jp)
Guide to Kaiwomaru Park｜海王丸パーク

The most exciting thing for my children was the reopening of the Pokémon Center after the state of emergency was cancelled. Even before the state of emergency was declared, Pokémon Center was crowded with people from small children to the elderly, but it had been closed during the declaration of the state of emergency. The Pokémon Center is an attractive place for children, as they can get items when they bring their game consoles and get stickers in their birthday month. As more and more things go online, it seems that we will continue to be served by stores that remind us of the fun of visiting an actual store.

I found a trademark registration for the Pokémon Center logo and standard characters on J-Plat Pat. The logo is Japanese trademark registration number 4598029, and the standard letters are registration numbers 4447341 and 5195807. (Marigold)

Various types of yogurt are being developed and sold by various manufacturers. Many people make it a habit to eat yogurt to stay healthy, so I have the impression that products that focus on the benefits of yogurt are displayed in prominent places.
The other day, I bought the newly released yogurt on display in large quantities.
It is a yogurt that specializes in memory. It seems to be a highly competitive field, as other companies are also selling yogurt specialized in memory. (Time)

Product name: “Memory Bifidus Memory Solution Yogurt” (Morinaga Milk)
Release date: October 12, 2021

Registered trademarks related to this product:
Standard character trademark: Memory Bifidus
Japanese Trademark Registration Number: No. 6350567
Date of registration: February 9, 2021

Hello. This is Hiro.
About a month ago, I was vaccinated with Pfizer’s new coronavirus vaccine for the second time. The sticker attached to the vaccination certificate had the indication “BIONTECH” in the stylized alphabet.

When I searched J-PlatPat using “BIONTECH” as a search keyword, I found almost the same registered trademark (international trademark 1478253), although the “T” part was slightly different.

The filing date of the basic application for the international trademark 1478253 (European Union Intellectual Property Office) is July 18, 2012, the international registration date is April 5, 2019, and the registration date in Japan is April 16, 2021. The right holder is “BioNTech SE”. About one year after the international registration, the new coronavirus infection began to spread worldwide, and it seems that the trademark was registered in Japan about one year later.

The trademark owner “BioNTech SE” (hereinafter “BioNTech”) is a biotechnology company established in Germany in 2008 by a Turkish-German couple (Wikipedia “BioNTech”). BioNTech has been developing a new coronavirus vaccine with Pfizer since March 2020 and put the vaccine into practical use in less than a year. The vaccine BioNTech and Pfizer have developed and put into practice is a type of vaccine called the mRNA vaccine. The mRNA vaccine is the first new vaccine approved in December 2020, which requires no pathogen production during the manufacturing process, is faster, cheaper, and more standardized than traditional protein-based vaccines. It seems that there is an advantage that it can be manufactured with a low defect rate in the manufacturing process (Wikipedia “RNA vaccine”).

As of the end of October 2021, the number of newly infected people has slowed down, probably because the number of vaccinated people has been increasing in Japan. However, I think it’s still an early stage and we need to be careful. I just hope that this pandemic will end as soon as possible while trying to prevent the spread of the infection.

I would like to introduce a pack of sweets that I like recently. It is “Country Maam Chocomamire” by Fujiya Co., Ltd.

This sweet is made of chocolate dough of “Country Ma’am (popular Japanese sweets)” (with chocolate chips) coated with milk chocolate and it is really a full of chocolate as the name suggests.

When you hear this explanation, you may think that it would be “extremely sweet”, but it is not as sweet as I thought it would be, and it is moist and very easy to eat. Would you like it to accompany a long autumn night reading?

“チョコまみれ(Chocomamire)” was registered as a Japanese trademark on June 2, 2021 (Registration No. 6397058). (Sakuramochi)

On my home PC, I use a trackball instead of a mouse. I think most people prefer mouse, but I’m for trackball.
In the case of a mouse, the mouse body is used to move the cursor on the screen by sliding it on the desk, but the trackball is the one that rolls the ball with your finger. It takes some time to get used to it at first.

The advantage of the trackball is that it can be used without moving it, which saves space, and the cursor can be moved without moving the arm, so there is less strain on the wrist and shoulders and mouse tendonitis can be prevented.

I started using it because I hurt my wrist while exercising, but the other day the trackball broke, so I replaced it.
The new trackball is ERGO M575 made by Logicool Co., Ltd.. As the name implies, it is a product that incorporates ergonomic design. You can use it without twisting your wrist at an unnatural angle, making it even more comfortable.

Logicool Co., Ltd. is a well-known brand of computer peripheral products and is a Japanese subsidiary of Logitech International, headquartered in Switzerland. The company has developed its products under the Logitech brand worldwide, but it seems that Logicool brand is used only in Japan. That is because Logitec Co., Ltd. already existed when the Japanese corporation was established. Logitec Co., Ltd. is also a company that deals with computer peripherals, and the trademark application of “Logitec” was filed in 1974, before the founding of Logitech in Switzerland.
The products of both companies are familiar to me and I have used them frequently for some time. (Syszo)

Logitech – Wikipedia
Logicool ERGO M575 (Japanese only)
What is mouse tendonitis? (Japanese only)
J-Plat Pat Japanese Trademark “Logitec”