Judge Maki Yamada of the Tokyo District Court attended an international conference called the "2006 High Technology Protection Summit", which was held in Seattle in the United States, on July 21 and 22, 2006. The conference was hosted by the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP), a research institute specializing in intellectual property law affiliated to the University of Washington.

Judge Yamada participated in the panel discussion which was held as part of the third session on the second day entitled "Transnational Enforcement of Patents." At this session, following the keynote speech entitled "Globalization of Patent Practice and Court," panel discussions were held under the themes of "Enforcement of Foreign Patents in US Courts" and "Enforcement of Foreign Patents in European and Japanese Courts" respectively. Judge Yamada made a 20-minute speech during the latter discussion, and participated in the subsequent question-and-answer session.

Judge Yamada's speech mainly aimed to explain the outline of the current state of the debate in Japan, as not all participants in the conference had basic knowledge of Japanese law. At the beginning of the speech, Judge Yamada summarized the current situation regarding intellectual property suits in Japan (concerning exclusive jurisdiction and the period of trial procedure). She then explained the general rules regarding international jurisdiction under the Japanese Code of Civil Procedure, and the current debate on specific issues concerning international jurisdiction for patent lawsuits (relationship with the principle of territoriality, defense of invalidity of patent in infringement cases, and concurrent pendency of related lawsuits in different countries) as well as precedents connected with the applicable law, while presenting her own views on these issues.

The summary of the speech is available here(153KB).