On June 8, 2026, a delegation from Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) visited us, and toured courtrooms and exchanged opinions with judges of the Intellectual Property High Court. IPO is an association founded in 1972 and represents holders of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Opinion exchange meetings with IPO had been held regularly before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this was the first after the relocation of the Intellectual Property High Court to the Business Court (the common name for the court building in Nakameguro where specialized divisions of the Intellectual Property High Court and the Tokyo District Court are located). The delegation included attorneys and patent attorneys specializing in intellectual property rights, as well as in-house attorneys from international enterprises.
The opinion exchange meeting began with opening greetings from Chief Judge MASUDA Minoru of the Intellectual Property High Court and Mr. Robert Siminski, Vice Chair of the IPO Asian Practice Committee, and then moved on to a presentation by a Japanese representative (Judge AMANO Kenji of the Intellectual Property High Court) that gave an overview of the Intellectual Property High Court and the characteristics of its proceedings, and IPO's presentation on examples of judicial decisions in recent intellectual property cases in the U.S. The meeting then moved on to a Q&A and opinion exchange session.