IP High Court Judge Kenjirou Furuya participated in the 2012 High Technology Protection Summit held in Seattle, Washington, USA, on July 27 and 28, 2012. This international conference was hosted by the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP), a research institute affiliated with the University of Washington.
Judge Furuya appeared in the panel discussion entitled "Multiple Systems for Challenging Validity: Roles of the USPTO and the Courts," which formed part of the first session entitled "America Invents Act: Harmony with the Rest of the World?", held on the first day of the conference. In the beginning of the discussion, he delivered a speech concerning the Japanese double-track (dual-track) system, in which validity of a patent can be challenged in a patent invalidation trial before the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and in a patent infringement suit before the court at the same time.

Judge Furuya's speech addressed many topics, including the outline of the current Japanese double-track (dual-track) system, the Japanese system operated in the past and its problems, the history of the 2011 revision to the Japanese Patent Act, and the expected effect of the legal revision. In addition, in light of the background for this session, which was held after the introduction of the post-grant review at the USPTO, he also explained the pre-grant and post-grant opposition systems that had existed in Japan but have been abolished, focusing on the merits and demerits of these systems and the reasons for their abolition.

The summary of the speech is available here(223KB).