We have the experience to protect your intellectual property.
- We provide various support for problems such as infringement of your patent rights, how to properly respond to a warning letter, infringment of trademark rights, what measures to take if other companies have copied your product, and utilizing public domain aspects of a competitor's design
- We can properly deal with intellectual property related disputes/agreements in Japan.
- We have abundant experience in representing our clients in trials, such as invalidation trials, suits against trial decisions and infringement suits.
- We can also provide various consultations concerning copyright of software or the like and unfair competition issues.
- An attorney at law in our firm is also capable of providing legal consultation on ordinary civil/criminal affairs.
Advantage of using our firm to protect your intellectual property
We have a Japanese attorney at law in addition to patent and trademark attorneys
In Japan, a patent and trademark attorney (benrishi) is only able to professionally represent clients in intellectual property related matters. At our firm, we not only employ patent and trademark attorneys, but also an attorney at law (bengoshi) that works full-time at our firm. Accordingly, if non-patent issues come up, it is not necessary to search for a firm to handle such matters. This is a great option for you since you, in such a situation, can be confident that all such issues can be handled by one cohesive team.
Also, our Japanese and U.S. attorneys at law can deal with agreement work, such as a joint development agreement and a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements, related to foreign clients. We can provide the proper advice concerning agreements ranging multiple jurisdictions. Further, we have a vast array of firms in other countries that we have strong relationships with that we can utilize if need be.
Moreover, our Japanese attorney at law can represent you not only regarding intellectual property issues, but also about ordinary civil/criminal affairs.
We have a U.S. patent attorney. Our Japanese patent and trademark attorneys and Japanese attorney at law are bilingual, fluent in English.
Their effective collaboration enables us to handle international intellectual property related matters/agreements.
There may be a situation where a foreign client enforces IP rights against a Japanese company or other foreign company based on their Japanese intellectual property rights (patent, utility model, design, trademark, etc.), or where rights of a Japanese company or other foreign company are enforced against a foreign client, or where a foreign client has to enter into an agreement (such as a joint development agreement and a confidentiality agreement) with a Japanese company or other foreign company concerning their intellectual property. In such cases, it may become necessary to negotiate in English or create an agreement in English. With our U.S. attorney and Japanese attorneys proficient English skills, we are able to provide legal advice and negotiation service, create an agreement, deal with litigation/trial, and offer various translation service.
Also, there are cases in which a dispute concerning the intellectual property rights of the foreign client develops simultaneously in Japan and overseas. In such cases, we can properly represent the case in dispute in Japan, in cooperation with a foreign agent who represents the case overseas.
Therefore, if a dispute/agreement arises, our Japanese patent and trademark attorneys, Japanese attorney at law, with their proficient English skills, and a U.S. patent attorney will work in collaboration to handle the dispute in order to provide the best-in-class service for you.
We have abundant experience in suits/trials.
In the past five years (since the year of 2007), we have represented clients in 32 suits against trial decision and 19 infringement suits (
1) in Japan.
1 The total number of intellectual property related suits filed in Japan in a year is about 500 cases, and the total number of suits against trial decision is about 450 cases. Japan has 9029 patent and trademark attorneys and 3766 firms to which one or more patent and trademark attorneys belong as of the end of April, 2011.
Accordingly, in average, the number of the intellectual property related suits one firm handles in 7.5 years would be one case. The number of the suits against trial decision one firm handles is also one case in 8.4 years in average. In view of this, our firm, having handled multiple cases per year for both infringement suits and suits against trial decision is at the top level in Japan concerning the experience in intellectual property related suits.
We are also skilled at handling problems relating to software.
We have had experiences where a client has had their software copied without authorization, experiences where clients are asked for compensation due to bugs in outsourced software, and experiences where a client may wish to legally utilize part of their competitor's software. We have experience in properly dealing with such consultations in all these situations under Japanese law.
We provide various consultations for foreign clients concerning infringement of intellectual property rights and litigation. By utilizing our vast skill set, our firm can be invaluable in representation in issues such as invalidation trials, suits against trial decision, and infringement suits.
