Maxwell “Mac” Fox

Maxwell (“Mac”) Fox offers clients an unsurpassed level of service as one of the few seasoned U.S. intellectual property litigators based in Japan.

He has been consistently recognized in publications such as Legal 500, IAM Patent 1000, and in Chambers, where he has garnered praise for his “fluent Japanese, high responsiveness and amazing practicality.”  With 25 years of experience in intellectual property litigation and licensing, he has counseled clients from electronics manufacturers to life sciences companies.

After spending the first eight years of his career based in his hometown of Los Angeles, Mac relocated to Tokyo, where he is qualified to practice in Japan as a Gaikokuho Jimu Bengoshi (Licensed Foreign Law Specialist). Advising clients on U.S. law, Mac has handled cases in district courts throughout the United States, and has experience with Section 337 actions before the International Trade Commission, and with appeals before the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. Clients praise Mac as “smart, driven… and very hands on” and “a wonderful lawyer who knows what he is doing and is very committed to what his clients ask of him.”

Mac’s career has spanned a wide array of technologies, with recent experience involving telecommunications and network security, chemical compounds and manufacturing processes, imaging solutions, digital displays, medical devices, and pharmaceutical innovations.  In addition to his IP litigation practice, Mac helps clients prepare and negotiate licenses and evaluate patent portfolios, in both contentious and collaborative transactional scenarios. 

Mac frequently speaks on IP law, has lectured on patent matters to the Japan Patent Attorneys Association and to the Chung Hwa Research Institute in Taiwan, and has guest lectured at Yamanashi University and at Keio University Law School.  In 2015, Mac was one of two U.S. lawyers invited to participate in a mock oral argument before the chief judge of the Federal Circuit at a symposium in Tokyo celebrating the 10th anniversary of the creation of Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court.

Mac graduated cum laude and with high honors from Dartmouth College.  He earned his J.D. from the University of California Berkeley School of Law, where he served on the executive board of the Berkeley Journal of International Law and was an editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal.  He received a Japan Foundation Fellowship while studying at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, administered by Stanford University in Yokohama, Japan.

He is a member of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and has served as a master of the Tokyo IP American Inn of Court.