Nakamura & Partners was established on 1 July 1914. The firm is an international trademark and patent law firm which provides a wide range of services in the field of intellectual property. It aims to provide the highest level of professional services in IP rights and related legal matters, to meet clients’ needs and to build long-lasting and trusting relationships with clients. Approximately 180 staff, including 63 patent and trademark attorneys and 18 attorneys at law, work at the firm. The scope of our practice is very extensive and includes both the prosecution of industrial property rights and litigation and other legal affairs centring on IP law.
Expertise
Nakamura & Partners comprises three sections: a trademark group, a patent group and a legal group. Our trademark group has nine trademark attorneys who handle trademark applications, oppositions and trials before the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and render expert opinions relating to trademark rights. Our patent group has 54 patent attorneys specialising in patent, utility model and design prosecution matters. Our legal group has 19 attorneys at law. The firm’s legal practice includes a wide range of counselling; infringement litigation and other types of litigation related to intellectual property (eg, patents, trademarks, designs, utility models, trade secrets, unfair competition prevention and copyright); and drafting and negotiations related to joint ventures, licensing, mergers and acquisitions, international business transactions and general corporate affairs.
Integration
In our firm, a close and effective cooperative relationship has been established between the patent and trademark groups and the legal group. Because of this relationship, our firm can simultaneously comply with clients’ wide-ranging requests, from the acquisition of strong exclusive rights to the effective enforcement and management of IP portfolios.
International reach
Approximately half of our clients are Japanese enterprises, while the other half are foreign enterprises. For clients in foreign countries, our firm chiefly engages in acquiring and enforcing rights in Japan.
Tradition
Our firm was established in 1914 by patent attorney Morio Nakamatsu, who served as the ninth commissioner of the JPO from 1907 to 1913, and so has a long history and tradition. Since it was established, the firm has continued to grow – the result of the strong reputation and high level of client confidence that it has acquired. It is also a result of the firm not being content to stick to tradition. Instead, we are always endeavouring to turn new pages in our history and to create new traditions that comply with our clients’ expectations. To this end, the firm deals with any and all new cases with the utmost sincerity and promptness.
Fostering talent
It is vital to foster the talents of our firm’s new members in order to maintain the reputation and client confidence which we now enjoy. To this end, our firm sends its more junior members to study at law schools abroad and to participate in academic meetings, seminars and symposia held in Japan and abroad, and has organised in-house study groups. Our firm has a high number of lawyers and patent attorneys who have studied in foreign countries. Some have been admitted to the Bar in the United States and some are qualified as US patent agents.
Our firm has received many legal awards and accolades in the IP field, from both the WTR 1000 and other publications (eg, Legal 500 Asia-Pacific every year since 1996 and Managing Intellectual Property every year since 2005).