What is Dr. Kondo Like?

Born in 1951, Dr. Keiji Kondo obtained B. Eng., M. Eng. and D. Eng. (Ph. D.) degrees in mineral resources development engineering respectively in 1974, 1976 and 1982 from the University of Tokyo. In Japan, where law schools are at the under graduate level, he is probably unique as a lawyer in that he has a doctor's degree in engineering, or natural science in a broad sense. Without any formal legal education, he studied law on his own when he was a doctor course student at the University of Tokyo. When he passed the national bar examination in 1979, only about 440 people out of nearly 30,000 applicants passed it. Most of the passers were, of course, law school graduates.

In 1984, Dr. Kondo was admitted to the bar and joined the law firm of Yuasa and Hara, where he was a partner from 1993 to 1996. He also worked as foreign associate for two law firms in Washington, D.C. from 1987 to 1989. The two law firms are Banner, Birch, McKie & Beckett (now called Banner & Witcoff ), and Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn . Leaving Yuasa and Hara in 1996, he founded FUKUDA & KONDO with Mr. Chikao Fukuda in 1997. His major areas of practice are: patent and other intellectual property litigation, licensing, distributorship, international trade, international joint venture, and related corporate and contractual matters.

Dr. Kondo was a member of the Unfair Competition Committee of the Institute of Intellectual Property from 1990 to 1993. He is a frequent lecturer of the APIC (Asia-Pacific Industrial Property Center) Intellectual Property Law Seminar held in Tokyo for Asian practitioners. He is a board member of the Japanese Group of AIPPI, and a member of the Intellectual Property Policy Promoting Board of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, the Japan Industrial Property Law Association, and the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.

In his personal life, Dr. Kondo is a good skier, an average Sunday tennis player and a poor golfer. He is about five feet eight inches tall and he weighs about 165 pounds. He has a wife, a son and a daughter, all of whom live with him in a residential area in the suburbs of Tokyo.

kkondo@tokyo.email.ne.jp

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