The National Police Agency will soon team up with the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry to fight industrial espionage.
Joint measures will include visits by police officers to about 10,000 domestic corporations with cutting-edge technology to give them advice, according to NPA sources.
Under the plan, which will be implemented as early as this autumn, companies with state-of-the art technology will also be provided with the latest information about how industrial spying is conducted, according to the NPA sources.
The move reflects growing concerns that the theft of leading technology from domestic companies could lower the international competitiveness of Japan’s corporate sector.
The economy ministry will list companies with sophisticated technologies or products that might be targeted by industrial spies from overseas and provide the information to the NPA.
Based on instructions from the NPA, officers of prefectural police forces will visit the companies’ head offices, plants and laboratories.
They will advise the companies how to protect highly important information, write confidentiality agreements with retiring employees and take other practical actions.
It is hoped the program will also have psychological deterrence effects, as visits by police officers to combat industrial spying are expected to discourage employees from divulging corporate secrets.
In some cases, according to the government, engineers who have moved to foreign companies have taken important corporate information with them. In other cases, people with ties to companies in other parts of Asia and the Middle East have tried to contact employees of Japanese companies with the aim of obtaining highly confidential information.
The Kyoto prefectural government and police force have implemented similar activities since November last year as a test case, and have assisted about 950 companies with head offices or other business bases in the prefecture, including Kyocera Corp.