History of Design and Design Law (PDF)

Tsukasa Aso is an associate professor of law (with tenure) at Kyushu University School of Design in Fukuoka, where he teaches intellectual property (IP) and design law courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. His research focuses on patent law, design law and copyright law as well as the intersection of civil and IP law. His recent publications include the interdisciplinary volumes Japanese Design Law and Practice (Wolters Kluwer, 2021) (in English) and The Legal System of Design Protection: Current Situation and Issues from the Perspective of Jurists and Designers (Nippon Hyoron Sha, 2016) (in Japanese) with Professor Christoph Rademacher; and The System of Design Protection in Different Countries (published as a Special Issue in 2017 (Vol. 25-2) of the Journal of the Science of Design by the Japanese Society for the Science of Design) (in Japanese). Professor Aso also writes about Japanese IP Law in French - for example, 'Droits de propriété industrielle et intellectuelle au Japon' in Pascale Bloch et al. (eds) Droit japonais des affaires (Larcier, 2019) pp. 121-171. He obtained his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in law from Keio University in Tokyo and has recently been a visiting scholar at the Center for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI), University of Strasbourg and Visiting Professor, Le Centre d'Etudes et de Coopération Juridique Interdisciplinaire (CECOJI), University of Poitiers.

Christoph Rademacher is a professor at Waseda University School of Law in Tokyo. He teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses in the field of business law and IP law, in both Japanese and English. Professor Rademacher's research focuses on the protection of technical innovation by means of patents and other rights. He is a regular speaker at IP law conferences in Asia, Europe and the US and has hosted over twenty international law conferences at Waseda. His publications include the treatise Patent Enforcement in the US, Germany and