Kohei OKUMURA

In addition to patent work, Kohei OKUMURA is active as a radio personality. Current programs: 『弁理士おっくんのアイデア革命』 on Kawasaki FM (79.1 MHz) and 『それってワタシだけ？』 on FM Salus (84.1 MHz; first Thursday of the month, from 22:30). Past program: 『エダコラジオの控え室』 on FM Salus. Titles are listed in the original Japanese.

At Waseda University he belonged to the Department of Applied Physics in the School of Science and Engineering, where he studied the fundamentals of physics as a natural science. For his graduation research, in the laboratory of Hirochika Nakajima, he worked on a microscope that observes, without destroying it, how well a device converts the wavelength of light.

After graduating he went on to the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo, and earned a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology in the laboratory of Masatoshi Ishikawa with research on high-speed optical axis control. He was also selected as a JSPS Research Fellow (DC2), a program that gives financial support to a limited number of doctoral students. During his studies he received many academic awards, among them the Journal Best Paper Award of the Robotics Society of Japan, the Best Paper Award (Hasunuma Prize) of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, the Best Paper Award in Measurement of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, and the Advanced Robotics Best Paper Award, the Robotics Society of Japan.

For a time he aimed at a research career, but realized that putting technical results into writing, rather than research itself, was the field where he could do his best work, and moved from university researcher to a patent firm. At one large firm and one small-to-mid-sized firm he handled prosecution for a wide range of clients, from large corporations to smaller companies. He also qualified as a patent attorney while at those firms. Clients place particular trust in him in fields that demand deep expertise, such as robot control, image processing and medical devices.

Now that he has founded IPX Patent Partners with Oshitani and holds the organization together, his main work is quality control within the firm, training new members, and building VBA-based systems. He still handles prosecution himself as a practitioner, for many university research institutions and university-launched ventures. Because he once aimed at a research career, he is also interested in education, and serves as a facilitator for practice-oriented courses on specification drafting and office action responses at IP Juku, run by Chizaijuku Inc.

His hobbies are languages and programming, and he is multilingual in Japanese, English and Korean. He is at home, for example, interviewing an inventor in English, understanding what was said, and putting it into a specification. His Korean is at upper-intermediate level, and he is one of the few Japanese patent attorneys who can work with Korean associates in Korean. He is among the best-known Japanese patent attorneys for developing practice-support programs. He patents the systems he builds, and also runs numerous seminars for patent firm attorneys to help the industry advance.