On January 28 and 29, 2016, Mitsuyasu Matsukawa, a judge in the Administrative Affairs Bureau of the Supreme Court of Japan, participated in the international conference of IP Scholars Asia held at SMU.

This international conference is a forum for scholars researching on IP law-related issues in Asia to present and discuss their works-in-progress with each other. The participants came from Asian countries including Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan as well as the UK, the US, and Australia.

The conference consisted mainly of key note presentations by four persons and multiple parallel sessions. Judge Matsukawa gave the presentation entitled “IP Litigations in Japan: Recent Trends and Future Perspectives” on the afternoon of Day 2.
In this presentation, he introduced the general information about the judicature, such as the geographical locations of courts in Japan; the jurisdiction of IP litigations; the role of the IP High Court; and some statistics on the average period of time in IP litigations and the patentees’ success ratio in patent infringement lawsuits (judgments and settlements). He also gave comparative considerations about the similarities between judicial research officials in Japan and assessors in Singapore. His presentation extended to topics on English translations of IP judgments in Japan and international exchanges among judges. In particular, “IP judgments listed by topic”(see this website) showing highly precedent-setting IP judgments translated into English which are categorized based on the main issues received accolades as a tool that increases access to Japanese law.
During and after the presentation, Judge Matsukawa received many questions from other participants deeply interested in Japanese IP litigation systems and how the systems would be run.

*Click here for reference to the materials used in the presentation（PDF1009KB）