A key strength of Lovells' Tokyo office is our Intellectual Property, Media & Technology (IPMT) team, which is one of the largest IPMT teams of any firm in Japan. Our team boasts both foreign qualified and Japanese qualified lawyers so that we can handle domestic and international IPMT matters for clients.
Lovells' Tokyo IPMT team
- Team of seventeen people
- Six Japanese qualified attorneys (all with business level English language abilities)
- Four foreign qualified attorneys (all with business level Japanese language abilities)
- Two paralegals
- One translator
- Four team assistants
- Ranked by independent publishers as a top tier IPMT practice amongst foreign firms in Japan
Key IPMT strengths
1. Geographical reach
- Japanese domestic IPMT legal advice
- International IPMT legal advice (Europe, USA and Asia)
- One stop service for multi-jurisdictional IPMT matters (Lovells has IPMT lawyers in 22 offices in 15 countries and a large network of law firms in other jurisdictions)
2. Advice on all types of IPMT rights
- Patents (except patent prosecution)
- Trade marks
- Designs
- Copyright
- Trade secrets
- Unfair competition
- Contentious and non-contentious
3. Advice on four major matter areas
(a) Registration (trade marks, design and domain names) and portfolio management
- Carrying out clearance searches;
- Providing registrability and use advice;
- Preparing and filing applications;
- Negotiating with third parties who have prior rights to acquire those rights or obtain letters of consent or co-existence agreements;
- Representing clients in cancellation and opposition procedures;
- Providing watching services;
- Auditing IP portfolios to identify enforceable rights and rectify areas that need strengthening;
- Providing advanced IT and internet related software and tools to assist clients in managing their portfolios.
(b) Commercialisation:
- Negotiating and drafting various IPMT related agreements (eg licence agreements and R&D agreements);
- Conducting IPMT due diligences in M&A transactions; negotiating and drafting IPMT related clauses in those M&A transactions
(c) Enforcement:
- Working with clients and investigation companies to identify infringers and the flow of infringing goods;
- Giving opinions on pre-enforcement issues (validity and infringement opinions);
- Developing enforcement strategies;
- Negotiating with infringers to reach amicable settlements;
- Representing clients in enforcement procedures including:
- administrative actions (including custom seizures);
- criminal actions; and
- civil actions.
(d) Defensive strategies:
- Advising clients on infringement risks and methods of reducing those risks;
- Representing clients in negotiations with right holders.
- Representing defendants in infringement actions.