On April 20, 2016, 23 members of the delegation of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) visited the IP High Court and had a meeting to exchange views and opinions with the judges of the IP High Court and also with judges of the Intellectual Property Division of the Tokyo District Court. AIPLA is an association established in 1897 that consists of approximately 14,000 jurists who mainly handle matters related to intellectual property rights.

At the meeting, after the greetings from Ms. Sharon Israel, the former President of AIPLA, and Chief Judge Ryuichi Shitara, Ms. Israel gave a presentation on the outline of method of calculation of the amount of damages in the U.S. entitled “Overview of Patent Damages Under U.S. Law” and Mr. Yuichi Watanabe gave a presentation on the details of the judgment of Grand Panel (en banc) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) entitled “Lexmark International Inc. v. Impression Products Inc. :Patent Exhaustion”, from the AIPLA. From the IP High Court, Chief Judge Ryuichi Shitara gave a presentation on the details of a judicially created doctrine shown by the judgment of the Grand Panel of the IP High Court entitled “Doctrine of Equivalents: Judgement of Intellectual Property High Court Grand Panel, March 25, 2016, [2015(Ne)10014]”(PDF626KB) and Judge Motoyuki Nakashima gave a presentation on the contents of the Supreme Court’s judgment on product-by-process claims delivered on June 5, 2015, and remaining problems entitled “Product by Process Claims in Japan.” (PDF1019KB)The presentations were followed by a lively exchange of questions and answers between both sides in connection with the contents of the abovementioned presentations, concerning differences in the damage calculation method between so-called utility patents and design patents in the U.S., the relationship between patent law and common law in the doctrine of US patent exhaustion, differences in damage calculation between juries and judges and the reason therefor, methods of judging infringements related to product-by-process claims, and way to construe the judicially created doctrine shown by the abovementioned judgment of the Grand Panel of the IP High Court.