31 October 2020
China’s intellectual property landscape is an ever-evolving one. The country has seen a tremendous improvement in intellectual property laws, regulations and court decisions in a very short time. It has, truly, taken the tiger by its tail and in little more than a generation transformed itself from a sleepy manufacturer of the rest of the world’s inventions into a dynamic intellectual property powerhouse in its own right.
Multinational corporations, inventors and others today widely understand that what they need to do to protect their IP in China these days is to engage one of the country’s burgeoning number of highly-skilled IP lawyers, who are able to provide key strategies and tactics, both to prevent IP problems before they happen and to handle IP infringement after it has been discovered.
With this growing confidence in China’s IP regime, we turned to IP professionals in the region in order to understand better what clients need today. Asia IP asked a large number of professionals – mostly in-house counsel and corporate legal managers – what they were looking for from their legal service providers. From their answers, we have compiled our list of 100 China IP Experts, those lawyers who understand just what their clients need and are able to provide them with the best practical advice.
Today’s clients are looking for more than just a degree from a top-notch university and a couple of decades of practice. In order to be an outstanding provider of intellectual property advice, a lawyer must also be capable of understanding how intellectual property impacts the rest of his client’s business, and be able to provide practical, real-world, business-savvy advice. She must be able to provide sound advice on the current law, but also needs to be able to understand coming trends which are likely to impact her client’s business.
As our list of China’s IP Experts began to emerge, we were reminded of the growth of home-grown Chinese law firms; of the 55 firms on the list, each of them can trace their roots to Chinese founders.
Unsurprisingly, some of the country’s largest and most successful law firms have attracted some of the country’s best talent, and landed a number of lawyers on our list. CCPIT Patent & Trademark Law Office, King & Wood Mallesons and Unitalen each placed five individuals on our list, while JunHe; Liu, Shen & Associates; NTD Intellectual Property Attorneys; and Wanhuida Intellectual Property each added four.
But smaller, upstart firms are also attracting top lawyers these days, witnessed by the inclusion of multiple lawyers from firms like AFD China Intellectual Property Law Office; An, Tian, Zhang & Partners; Chang Tsi & Partners; Ferrante Intellectual Property; Jadong IP; and Zhong Lun.
Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice.
All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s China IP Experts.
China’s IP Experts is based solely on independent editorial research conducted by Asia IP. As part of this project, we turned to thousands of in-house counsel in China, Asia and elsewhere and around the world, as well as China-focused partners at international law firms, and asked them to nominate private-practice lawyers including foreign legal consultants, advisers and counsel.
The final list reflects the nominations received combined with the input of editorial team at Asia IP, which has more than 40 years of collective experience in researching and understanding China’s legal market.
All private practice intellectual property lawyers in China were eligible for inclusion in the nominations process; there were no fees or any other requirements for inclusion in the process.
The names of our 100 IP Experts are published here. Each IP Expert was given the opportunity to include their biography and contact details in print and on our website, for which a fee was charged.
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