• In the first part of the conference, Professor Dietz will talk about the structure of modern continental European copyright laws with the following five "pillars" or subsystems; substantive copyright law, neighboring rights, copyright contract law, collecting societies law and, finally, enforcement. According to him, only a balanced interrelated regulation of all these subsystems will effect that creative people are really sufficiently protected by "their" copyright, also in economic terms (adequate remuneration).
• He will focus on the cultural function of collecting societies and the problem and recent development of the copyright contract law in Germany by introducing the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of 23 October 2013.
• If time allows, he will also touch upon the quite recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on copyright law.

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• The second part of the conference will focus on trade secret protection, and area of intellectual property law that scholars and industry alike have often overlooked in the past. Japan codified the protection of trade secret only in the beginning of the 1990s, in part due to the requirement of enacting trade secret laws deriving from the TRIPS Agreement. However, since 1990, Japan gradually improved its trade secret regulations, resulting in Japan recently being assessed by the OECD as the country with the second strongest protection of trade secrets in the world, second only to the USA. However, despite such objectively strong protection, companies often complain that they have difficulties protecting their trade secrets against misappropriate especially from former employees. During the second part of this conference, Prof. Sandeen, a leading US trade secret law professor, Prof. Tamura and Judge Takabe will present their view on the development and problems of trade secret law and its application in civil court in the US and in Japan, followed by a discussion of the practice of trade secret protection with representatives of US and Japanese companies recognized as major players in trade secret law.

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