In 1989, Katsuhisa Hattori and his son, Takayuki Hattori, who is also a composer, produced the first orchestrated Final Fantasy music CD for critically acclaimed video game music composer Nobuo Uematsu.
The CD was performed by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and entitled "Symphonic Suite Final Fantasy".
In September 2002, the Tokyo High Court ordered Hattori to pay 9.4 million yen[2] in damages, ruling that there was a strong similarity between his song, "Kinenju" (記念樹, "Memorial Tree"), and Asei Kobayashi's song "Dokomademo Iko" (どこまでも行こう, "Let's Go To Eternity Together").
[3] Asei Kobayashi's music publisher, the Kanai Ongaku Shuppan company, who gave JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) permission to manage the song "Dokomademo Iko" in 1967, claimed that JASRAC had illegally allowed the use of the sound-alike song.
In December 2003, the Tokyo District Court ordered JASRAC to pay 1.8 million yen in damages, for allowing the publishing, broadcast and sale in CD form of Hattori's song.