Professor Masabumi SUZUKI is a professor of intellectual property law at the Faculty of Law, Waseda University. He is also a co-director of the Waseda University Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property (RCLIP). Professor Suzuki received an LL.B. from the University of Tokyo (1981) and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School (1986). He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1987, and completed his legal training at the Legal Training and Research Institute of Japan in 1994.

Before joining the faculty at Waseda, Professor Suzuki was a professorat Nagoya University from 2002 to 2023, where he also served as Dean of its Graduate School of Law from 2018 to 2020. He has also taught as a visiting professor or lecturer at multiple universities outside Japan, including at National Taiwan University, Maastricht University, and Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Before becoming an academic, he was a government official at the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) from 1981 to 2002, assuming roles such as Director for North American Trade Policy Planning (1995-1998), Director of the Office of Intellectual Property Policy (1999-2001) and Director of the Office of Trade Policy Review (2001-2002). He also served as a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (1998-99).  

Professor Suzuki is a member of the Management Board of academic associations related to IP law in Japan, and of the Editorial Board of GRUR International. He is also on the indicative list of panelists at the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. His recent works include Commentaries on the Japanese Trademark Act (2022) (co-editor), Reactive Instruments of Social Governance (Mohr Siebeck 2019) (co-editor), and Patent Remedies and Complex Products: Toward a Global Consensus (Bradford Biddle et al. eds., Cambridge University Press 2019).

masasuzuki@aoni.waseda.jp