On November 30, 2017, S&E and the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation held an event at the Delegation of the European Union with regard to recent developments in EU and Japanese IP and privacy law.  The event offered an update as to how the European Unitary Patent system is expected to be implemented during the first half of 2019 and how the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) has been implemented in the past six months, and the second half of the event highlighted key court decisions from the EU and Japan on important intellectual property-related issues.

Sonderhoff & Einsel’s Kengo Sakai gave a well-received presentation titled, “Roundup of Recent Important IP-related Decisions in Japan” and his presentation focused on the IP High Court’s decision on the “Pyrimidine Derivative” Grand Panel Case and later participated in a panel discussion where there was a lively Q&A session among the speakers and the audience on this decision, IoT, and AI.