We are an international patent law firm capable of assisting clients in all aspects of filing for patents, trademarks, and designs domestically and overseas.

Yanagida & Associates, an international IP law firm was founded in September 1973 in Tokyo, and moved to the city of Yokohama, Japan, in May 1995. The size of the firm has been doubled since it moved to Yokohama. The offices are located in front of Shin-Yokohama Station, 18 minutes from Tokyo by bullet train (Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen).
The firm is particularly specialized in handling patents, trademarks and desigs in English language for foreign clients as it has higly skilled in-house translators including an American native proof reader, and patent attorneys and paralegals of high proficiency in English language.
After the firm moved to Yokohama, it was ranked in the Top 10 of Japan IP firms in a Survey of the journal "Managing Intellectual Property" in October 1996. In the Success-rate Ranking published in the May 1998 newspaper, among 45 Japanese IP Firms that received more than 400 Patent Office Decisions, it was ranked No.3.

The firm has 10 patent attorneys andwho are handling patent or trademark applications and prosecutions, and covers all fields of technologies including computer software and biotechnology. The firm provides services in filing applications, prosecuting applications, filing appeals before the Patent Office, Intellectual Property High Court and Supreme Court, handling infringement suits before District Courts, filing appeal before the IP High Court and the Supreme Court, filing invalidation trials, giving professional opinions on infringement or validity, and conducting searches in the field of patents, utility models, designs and trademarks. The firm is equipped with a computerized patent filing system, a computerized patent file control system, a computerized patent and trademark search system, and facsimile and e-mail transmitting devices.

All the patent attorneys and technical staff who are planning to become patent attorneys have been educated at highly ranked universities and are experienced in large industries in Japan, so they have good understanding of inventions. The courses they graduated from at university are; Electronics, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, Mining Engineering, Agricultural Chemistry, Information Technology and Telecommunication Engineering. The technical fields covered by the staff based on their experiences in industry and with the clients are; Electronics, Electrical engineering, Medical Instruments, Image display technologies, Data processing, Image processing, Computer software, Photography, Automotive, Mechanical engineering, Plastic engineering, Manufacturing engineering, Chemical engineering, Biological chemistry, Genetic engineering, Organic chemistry, Inorganic chemistry, Glass manufacturing, Ceramics, Fiber optics manufacturing, Laser diode, Semiconductor (Solid State Technology), Food science, Material science, and Pharmaceuticals.