This seminar shall take a closer look at the current developments in intellectual property law in the EU and Japan. Experts from Europe and Japan will provide most recent information on the following subjects which are closely related to business activities:

a) The EU Unitary Patent is approaching the final stretch, despite different legal issues in several European member states. The presentation will address the latest preparation steps, the current status of the system and the first steps to take after the start of the Provisional Application Phase.

b) With the recent boom of Artificial Intelligence, more and more creative works and inventions are the results of non-human authors and inventors. Computer algorithms and learning machines have become a new source of creativity and inventiveness. Are the results generated by AI eligible to legal protection under Japanese and European copyright and patent statutes, and in whom do such rights vest? Two presentations will cover AI and copyright and AI and patent issues.

c) In Europe, particular issues arise in the rapidly growing field of life science and biotechnology inventions such as nucleic acids, genes, proteins and organisms, where patentable subject matter may be limited by way of legal provisions. A presentation will reflect the steadily developing interpretation of the EPC concerning biotechnology in interaction with EU law.

Download the programme, in japanese

Download the programme, in english