Government and Corporate legal practices regarding TPP (11): Intellectual Property

Kojiro Fujii specializes in the fields of competition law and international trade law. He also covers emerging areas of digital policy/regulations and public policy/regulations, such as those related to sustainability. His expertise in these areas is frequently recognized by international and domestic legal publications. Kojiro also is regularly ranked by Chambers (Band 1 International Trade, Japan and Band 2 TMT, Japan) and Who’s Who Legal (Competition). He achieved the highest ranking in the “International Trade and Economic Security” category of Nikkei’s “Most successful lawyers” (as voted by Japanese companies and peer lawyers) in 2022; he was recognized by Asian Legal Business as one of the Top 15 Technology, Media and Telecommunications Lawyers in Asia in 2023; and he was shortlisted for the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards Asia-Pacific as the Most Innovative Practitioner for his work covering those areas in 2024.

In addition to his career at N&A, he served as the deputy director of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, where he handled several important WTO disputes on behalf of the Japanese government. He also worked at a highly reputable international law firm in Washington DC, where he focused on antitrust matters.

He graduated from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Frontier Sciences (M.S.) in 2004. Due to his technical background, he advises clients on various technology matters, including artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, data protection, data utilization, medical field, healthcare, software, systems, cloud computing, OSS, information technology, DX, and quantum computing. His time at the Akira Hirose laboratory at the University of Tokyo provided him with deep knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI because he studied neural networks, which is the main technology of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI. He successfully passed the Japanese patent attorney examination in 2002, and he has been admitted in Japan since 2009. He advises clients on various intellectual property law matters due to his technical background and knowledge as a Japanese patent attorney. Regarding dispute matters related to intellectual property, he has handled patent litigation, litigation regarding employee inventions and trade secret litigation, among others. He especially has considerable experience in trade secret disputes, and he provides a support service on countermeasures against divulging trade secrets, including drafting company regulations, data management practice, and employee training.