On July 22 and 23, 2005, Judge Takuya Ueda of the Intellectual Property High Court participated in an international conference called “High Technology Protection Summit”. This conference was held in Seattle, United States, hosted by the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Properties (CASRIP), a research institute specializing in intellectual property law affiliated to the University of Washington.

Judge Ueda made a 20-minute speech at the sub-session entitled “Examination of Phillips Questions from the Comparative Law Perspective”, and participated in the discussions as a panelist. The sub-session was a part of “Claim Construction” session on the second day of the conference. In his speech, Judge Ueda commented, from the perspective of a Japanese judge, on the decision of the Phillips v. AWH Corp. case that was handed down by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on July 12, 2005. In the Phillips case, the CAFC indicated a detailed methodology of claim construction in patent infringement lawsuits. Judge Ueda presented his view on claim construction under Japanese law in contrast with its US counterpart. In addition, Judge Ueda introduced the Japanese judicial system to deal with patent infringement lawsuits (e.g. exclusive jurisdiction of the Tokyo and Osaka District Courts as the first instance, exclusive jurisdiction of the Intellectual Property High Court as the second instance, judges and judicial research officials specializing in patent lawsuits).

The summary of Judge Ueda's speech in English is available here (PDF 79KB).