Mr. Hayakawa is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group of Morrison & Foerster’s Tokyo Office. Prior to joining the firm’s Tokyo Office, he practiced in the San Francisco Office for several years. His practice is concentrated on transactions and counseling involving intellectual property, including structuring and negotiating license agreements, technology transfers, adversarial patent litigation settlements, outsourcing arrangements, joint development agreements and other intellectual property matters relevant to technology companies. Mr. Hayakawa is also very experienced in the intellectual property aspects of mergers and acquisitions. He advises clients, both emerging and established companies, from a range of industries. For example, Mr. Hayakawa has counseled companies in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, semiconductor technology companies, financial institutions, and multinational technology conglomerates. He has extensive experience in cross-border transactions, having worked on major transactions in the United States, Asia, and Europe, and he is fluent in Japanese.
Mr. Hayakawa is recommended in the fields of TMT and Intellectual Property in The Legal 500 Asia Pacific 2017 and described as "a rising star of note" in Intellectual Asset Management’s IAM Licensing 250: The World's Leading Patent & Technology Licensing Lawyers 2011/2012, as well as in IAM’s Patent 1000 where he is listed as a Recommended lawyer in the licensing category for its 2013 and 2014 editions.
Mr. Hayakawa has provided legal services on a pro bono basis to a number of non-profit organizations such as The Yale Law Journal, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) of Japan, Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, and HAND (Helping After Neonatal Death). Mr. Hayakawa also serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of The Yale Law Journal.
Mr. Hayakawa received his A.B. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with highest honors. He earned his J.D. degree from the Yale Law School, where he served as an articles editor of the Yale Journal of International Law and later as managing editor of The Yale Law Journal. Mr. Hayakawa is admitted to practice in California and as a Gaikokuho-Jimu-Bengoshi in Japan.
Masato Hayakawa is recommended by The Legal 500 Asia Pacific 2017 for TMT and Intellectual Property. He is also recommended in Intellectual Asset Management’s IAM Patent 1000 2014: The World’s Leading Patent Practitioners in the licensing category. Client feedback stated, "Masato Hayakawa is singled out as a rising star of note: he is ‘relatively junior, but he really knows what he is doing.’ "
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