"It was a pleasure working with them, as their services are performed at a top level with very high quality," recalls a client of Mori Hamada & Matsumoto. "Their answers are accurate and crystal clear." A bengoshi (attorney-at-law) firm with a flair for contentious work, Mori Hamada & Matsumoto is perhaps better known for its work in the corporate and commercial world, but has easily translated its success to the IP team under the business-savvy leadership of Masayuki Matsuda.
This team continues to handle a number of high-profile cases this year, particularly in the areas of copyright infringement – reminiscent of its record year in 2009. One of the most significant cases Matsuda is handling, with support from fellow partners Hiroko Yamamoto and Shinichiro Yoshiba, involves defending a copyright infringement case for a Japanese television network company against a government agency of North Korea, a country which Japan does not recognize as a state. With the case pending appeal at the Supreme Court, no court precedent has previously been set for the issues at hand, including whether the work is protected by Japanese copyright law under the Berne Convention or general tort principle under the Civil Code.
In another case that recently closed, practitioner Yuko Noguchi defended a Japanese company against trade mark and unfair competition claims made by a famous French company by conducting extensive trade mark and market research to prove the mark in question has been used in Japan for hundreds of years, leading to the claim being withdrawn by the opposing side. Of Noguchi, a French client points out: "She is very proactive, responsive and understands technical problems very quickly, even difficult scientific matters – this is a real asset."