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A Message from YKI Patent Attorneys President Kenji YOSHIDA
　　- My Experience as President of the APAA -

In 2012, I completed a three-year term as President of the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA), handing over responsibilities to the current President, Mr. C. K. Kwong from Hong Kong.

The APAA is an international association of intellectual property professionals from the Asian region. Established in 1969 by a group of patent attorneys from Japan, Korea, and the Republic of China who joined together to provide an Asian voice in discussions planning the new Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the APAA is today a formal association representing over 2,300 members from 24 jurisdictions in Asia and Oceania, and the APAA annual meetings now typically draw well over a thousand intellectual property practitioners, including both APAA members from Asia and observers from every continent except Antarctica.

During my years as President I had the opportunity to travel throughout the region and meet with intellectual property and policy creators in every APAA jurisdiction, an experience I greatly value and treasure.

One of my observations was that, led by Japan, Korea and China, Asia has grown into a huge market which is now in turn catalyzing rapid growth in interest towards creating and protecting intellectual property in the region. In much of the region, particularly in the new ASEAN region, I witnessed especially strong interest in developing intellectual property in the form of trademarks, copyrights, and corporate registers, and that attorneys-at-law, rather than patent attorneys, appeared to play a larger role in both practice and policy.

Sadly, although mainland China is now the largest single market in Asia, intellectual property practitioners from China have been unable to accept our invitation to join the APAA. The invitation remains open and sincere.

Paired with the above observation, I saw that there remains undeveloped potential for the development and valuation of patent rights in much of the region, as can be directly observed in the following chart showing the number of patent applications filed in each APAA member jurisdictions in 2011:
 

Number of Patent Applications Filed in APAA Member Jurisdictions (2011)

　　　　　　　　　　* Except as noted, the above data is from WIPO.
　　　　　　　　　　* Data for Taiwan from Taiwan Intellectual Property Office.
　　　　　　　　　　* No data reported for Nepal, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and Bhutan.
Hatsumei (The Invention), Vol. 110 (2013), No. 3, p.7 (Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation; March 1, 2013)

At YKI Patent Attorneys, we value our Asian network of clients and associates. We hope to continue to cultivate this network, be at the forefront of the development of new IP markets, and to work to open our extensive Asian network to our clients and partners in the West.