午夜剧场

Since the Master of Laws (LL.M) in Global Legal Practice was established in the Law School in April 2017, I have been in charge of the Intellectual Property Rights course every year through a cross-appointment with the University of Washington School of Law, where I hold tenure. All lectures are conducted in English, and the majority of students are international students. Since the 2020 academic year, all lectures for international students have moved online. Subsequently, while lectures for Japanese students gradually returned to in-person classes, the Master of Laws (LL.M) in Global Legal Practice continued with online lectures, and the 2022 academic year began with hybrid lectures.

The shift to online formats during the COVID-19 pandemic brought the disadvantage of making active student participation in lectures difficult, but for me, I feel the benefits were greater. It became easier to request lectures and presentations from scholars in Europe and the United States, and it also became possible to give presentations at overseas lectures and seminars from Tokyo.

Furthermore, it became easier to participate in Japanese government councils and meetings of various intellectual property organizations. The elimination of jet lag and evening social gatherings was also a significant factor in being able to live a healthier life. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic brought many new research themes to intellectual property law. While patents are usually thought of as rights to exclude competitors, a movement for "patent openness" spread worldwide, where entities declared they would not exercise these rights against actions aimed at ending the pandemic, even against competitors. The U.S. government declared a waiver of patents for vaccines and treatments, and the suspension of intellectual property rights for vaccines was discussed at the G20 Summit; however, due to opposition from developed countries holding numerous intellectual property rights, a conclusion to open them was not reached.

On the other hand, international treaties and national intellectual property law systems already have mechanisms for restricting the exercise of intellectual property rights during emergencies, leading some to question the necessity of treating COVID-19 vaccines as a special case. Since development involves countless intellectual property rights, there is also the issue of the scope of openness. Recently, incentives for drug discovery and treatment development have been changing, and some economists point out that the patent system based on traditional incentives—recovering investment by selling new drugs at high prices through monopolies—is becoming outdated.

In this way, new technologies and social phenomena provide intellectual property researchers with interesting themes every year. Even after more than 30 years as a researcher, I can still tackle new research themes with the fresh stimulation of a beginner.