Kensaku Yamamoto

Kensaku Yamamoto is the Managing Partner of SHUSAKU·YAMAMOTO, one of the largest and most highly regarded intellectual property, technology and commercial law firms in Japan. The firm maintains offices in Osaka, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Fukushima, and China.

Mr Yamamoto’s major practice areas range from pharmaceutical law including those related to drugs, medical devices and diagnostics products; all practice related to prosecution and enforcement of intellectual property, regulatory issues including those affecting the research, testing, approval, post-approval compliance of drugs; commercial law, mergers and acquisitions.

Mr Yamamoto advises clients on commercial contracts, litigation, research and technology collaborations, contentious and noncontentious matters, including complex cross-jurisdictional disputes, as well as licensing transactions involving patents, trademarks, designs and other intellectual property rights.

As the Managing Partner, Mr Yamamoto has a strong legal, technical and practical expertise and industrial know-how in International Corporate Transactions, Civil Rehabilitation, Internal investigations, Litigation, Venture Capital, Project Finance, Product liability & Safety, Trade regulation and Government approvals.

He also regularly publishes articles on intellectual property and life science journals in Japanese and English including Dai-ichi Hoki and Managing Intellectual Property.

Mr Yamamoto believes that the key element that sets him apart is his effective management of lawyers, patent attorneys, technology specialists, paralegals and secretaries from multitude of backgrounds and his ability able to bring out their strengths so that they can all synergistically work together to bring about excellent results for clients – as evidenced by the firm’s recognition in Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, IAM Patent, Asia Legal Business among others.

Mr Yamamoto’s unique and effective style of leadership and management was recognised when he was named as one of the finalists in the Managing Partner of the Year category in the Asia Legal Business, Japan Law Awards (2019 & 2020). Ken was also named as a “Recognized Practitioner” by Chambers and Partners under the 2020 Intellectual Property rankings in Japan.

SHUSAKU·YAMAMOTO

“I manage a firm with formidable in-house capability and expertise,” said Mr Yamamoto. “Our firm’s composition is a reflection of its diverse group of legal professionals made up of both Japanese lawyers and foreign attorneys admitted in New York, England and Wales, Australia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia. This diverse background results in a legal service which operates in an international level.”

SHUSAKU·YAMAMOTO prides itself for assisting Nobel Prize winners in the successful prosecution of their patents with the JPO (Japan Patent Office).

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Prof. John B. Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.” The firm assisted in the successful prosecution of several pioneering Japanese patents directed to this Nobel Prize winning discovery. This lightweight, rechargeable and powerful lithiumion battery technology is now ubiquitously used in smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles and airplanes.

Prof. William G. Kaelin Jr. was one of three winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. The firm was able to play a part in helping Professor Kaelin, as an inventor, and the Dana Farber Institute obtain Japanese patents directed to this Nobel Prize winning discovery.