On the 8th and 9th of April, 2015 (local time), Chief Judge Ryuichi Shitara of the Intellectual Property High Court participated in the 23rd Annual Intellectual Property Law & Policy Conference, hosted by the Fordham Intellectual Property Institute, at the Law Department of University of Cambridge, England.

This international conference, which is normally convened at Fordham University, New York, was held at University of Cambridge this year after an interval of seven years. Consequently between 200 to 300 judges and legal practitioners, who engage in intellectual property matters from Europe and the U.S. participated, by giving reports and engaging in discussions as speakers, panelists or in other roles.

The Annual Conference was comprised of a Plenary Session held in the morning of the first day and many Concurrent Sessions that followed, namely three Concurrent Sessions simultaneously held for one or two hours at a time. Chief Judge Shitara participated in one session as a speaker, and two sessions as a panelist.
In his role as a speaker, Chief Judge Shitara spoke at the session entitled “Global Patent Development,” which was held in the afternoon of the first day, on the theme of “Is a judgment a singular effective way for solution of the patent conflict?”. He (1) explained the practices of court settlement in patent litigations in Japan, (2) disclosed that a research on the outcome of patent litigations which concluded by both court decisions and settlements revealed that the actual rate of patent holders winning patent disputes is roughly 45% overall, and (3) discussed the benefits and other factors relating to the resolution through court settlement. Questions from the audience included a question as to the possibility of adopting the settlement procedures of Japanese courts as a means to resolving world-wide conflicts.

In addition, Chief Judge Shitara participated as a panelist in an early morning session entitled “Views from the Judiciary” on the second day with the Hon. Annabelle Bennett of the Federal Court of Australia, the Hon. Mr. Justice Colin Birss of the Chancery Division, High Court of England, the Hon. Mr. Justice Peter Charleton of the Supreme Court of Ireland, the Hon. Roger T. Hughes of the Federal Court of Canada, and the Rt. Hon. Prof. Sir Robin Jacob, former judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. During the first half of the session, judges from each country frankly discussed their views on pre-trial case management procedures relating to patent litigation. In the latter half, the discussion focused on how the supreme courts in each country decide on highly technical issues of intellectual property and how those decisions should be evaluated. Furthermore, Chief Judge Shitara participated in the session entitled “FRAND Royalties and Injunctions in the U.S. and EU: Convergence and Divergence” on the last morning of the second day, where he discussed the situation in Japan concerning patents for which FRAND declarations have been made by referencing the contents of the May 16, 2014 decision of the Grand Panel of the Intellectual Property High Court on the Apple vs. Samsung case.

The summary of speech is available here. PDF(215KB)