Judge Hiroaki Imai of the Intellectual Property High Court attended an international conference called the "2008 High Technology Protection Summit," which was held in Seattle, the United States, on July 25 and 26, 2008. The conference was hosted by the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP), a research institute specialized in intellectual property law affiliated to the University of Washington.

At the first session, "Patent Exhaustion and Implied License," held on the first day of the conference, Judge Imai participated in the panel discussion under the theme of "Recent Developments in Patent Exhaustion in U.S., Europe and Japan," and outlined the current status of arguments on patent exhaustion in Japan.

The discussion covered the U.S. Supreme Court decision recently handed down in the Quanta Case. In his presentation, Judge Imai provided a detailed explanation of the Japanese Supreme Court decision on the Ink Cartridge Case, which can be regarded as the outcome of arguments on patent exhaustion in Japan, so as to help the participants understand the significance of this decision from a technical viewpoint.

The summary of the speech is available here(963KB).