The winner of our 2025 China IP Awards IP Firm of the Year firm comes as no surprise: Beijing-based CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office takes the award home for the sixth consecutive year. The firm is the oldest and one of the largest full-service IP law firms in China, and it continues to provide strong results in both litigation and prosecution work. The firm’s history dates to January 1957, when a trademark agency was established within the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, a non-governmental trade promotion organization, to represent foreign companies before Chinese authorities. The agency was the sole trademark agency in China until the mid-1980s. The firm organized a patent agency in the early 1980s, when China began to establish its patent system. The patent agency was authorized as the first Chinese intellectual property law firm to have cross-border representation. In 1993, the two agencies merged to form the CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office. The firm, which boasts senior lawyers including president Chuanhong Long and vice presidents Shaohui Yuan and Jianzhong Kang among its leadership, and some 322 patent and trademark attorneys and 100 qualified attorneys at law, is the recipient of many honours and awards, and was a clear winner in this category. Headquartered in Beijing, the firm has branches in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Wuhan. 

Advance China IP Law Office (ACIP), founded in 1999, is now one of the largest full-service IP law firms in China with over 1,000 IP professionals. ACIP patent team features 137 trademark attorneys, 443 patent attorneys and patent engineers, 56 litigators, and hundreds of supporting staff, including former patent examiners and senior in-house IP professionals. The firm represented Fossekallen Holding, a Norwegian coffee company, which owns the Fuglen brand. Although Fuglen coffee has not yet opened any store in China, it is quite well-known among the Chinese coffee consumers, which know of it via online platforms like LittleRedBook, WeChat, etc. A Chinese individual registered the client’s brand device as a trademark in Class 30 in 2021, which was invalidated by CNIPA.  

CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office is the oldest and one of the largest full-service IP law firms in China, and it continues to provide strong results in litigation and prosecution. Among its many examples of top trademark prosecution work is an administrative appeal before the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on behalf of UEFA, the Union des Associations Européennes de Football, after a trademark invalidation, at its Champions League, which bolstered protection of the UEFA Champions League’s iconic Starball device. 

Kangxin Partners has eight offices across China, offering a range of IP services. The firm advised Automobile Lamborghini in a trademark invalidation action filed against it which claimed that Lamborghini’s mark was similar to the opponent’s marks over similar goods. Kangxin lawyers argued that 1) Lamborghini created the bull device in the mark and owns prior copyright over it; 2) the parties’ marks could be distinguished from each other in terms of mark composition, pronunciation and visual effect as they both still contain other elements; and 3) the client and their mark have obtained high reputation around the world, and the bull device in the client’s mark has established a sole relation with our client through long term use.

NTD IP Attorneys was established in 1987 and has main offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and liaison offices in Munich, Silicon Valley and Tokyo. The firm has more than 60 trademark attorneys and 20 plus supporting staff in its trademark group, including 14 senior trademark attorneys (each with experience more than 10 years in the field of trademark) as leaders of different teams. Its trademark attorneys are experienced in strategic counselling and are adept at solving trademark problems by providing practical and efficient solutions in the most cost-effective way. It has filed more than 100,000 applications for registration in past years, and maintains an in-house computerized trademark management and watching database. 

Unitalen Attorneys at Law handled more than 22,000 new trademark applications in 2023, of which about 17,000 were new domestic trademark applications and 5,000 were international applications. The firm dealt with more than 16,000 cases of trademark renewals and modifications, including more than 10,000 domestic trademark cases and more than 6,000 international trademark cases. The firm houses a large number of attorneys, paralegals and clerks to serve clients from its Beijing headquarters and 22 other offices in China including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. With additional offices in Tokyo, Munich and San Francisco, Unitalen prides itself in representing a diverse range of clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies such as Tencent. 

CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office is advising Exxon Mobil before the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on a matter against Zhengzhou Dejuzhongchuang, which believes its “美弗威霸” (Mei Fu Wei Ba) mark has been infringed. The disputed mark is not the same as the Mobil mark in Chinese, but the first two characters (美弗) share the identical sound as the Chinese mark of Mobil (美孚). Taking the high reputation and the distinctive characters of the cited marks, and the bad faith of the disputed party into consideration, the CNIPA as well as the Court consider the disputed mark a copy/imitation/translation of the cited marks. 

China Patent Agent (H.K.) has a strong legal service team, comprising 160-plus litigators from its legal affairs department as well as various business departments across its headquarters and branch offices; 70-plus are attorneys-at-law. CPA helped a client successfully win a trademark litigation regarding non-use cancellation. Having reviewed the evidence provided by the registrant in the administrative proceeding, the firm realized that the evidence may not support sales of goods in mainland China. It noted that the registrant attended an exhibition in China within the specified time limit, so asked the registrant to provide further reinforcing evidence to prove its actual attendance at the exhibition. In addition, it learned from the registrant that it has been sourcing goods from Chinese manufacturers. The court accepted this new evidence and successfully maintained the disputed mark. 

HFG Law & Intellectual Property practices out of offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, offering contentious and non-contentious IP work with commercial and corporate law services. The firm advised Mary Kay, a purveyor of cosmetics, in a case against an infringing defendant which had been selling Mary Kay’s products through its online shop, with batch numbers and service QR codes that had been removed from the packages. The court ruled that the sale of the products with decoded batch numbers and service QR codes constituted unfair competition. “There is not an explicit stipulation about this decoding behaviour in the current law and whether decoding products could constitute illegal behaviour is unknown. Through comprehensive debate, finally the court held the decoding behaviour had violated Article 2 of Anti-unfair Competition Law and belongs to ‘general unfair competition act’,” the firm told Asia IP. 

IP March was established in March 2016. The firm’s client Salomon has a very popular running shoe which is usually called “小红鞋”(which means “little red shoes”) by runners, because the shoe is red in colour. Based on monitoring, it was found that a company in Fujian applied “小红鞋” in Class 25. According to search results, the mark hasn’t been used during the past three years, so the firm advised its client to initiate non-use cancellation on this registered mark and file new trademark applications in the name of Salomon. The trademark registered by the Fujian company was then successfully cancelled, after which the firm advised the client to apply for “萨洛蒙小红鞋” (equivalent to “Salomon little red shoes”) and preserve use evidence of “小红鞋” and attempt to apply again in the future. With the above, “萨洛蒙小红鞋” has been registered in Class 25. However, the application for “萨洛蒙小红鞋” in Class 35 was provisionally refused by the CNIPA based on the prior mark “萨洛蒙” registered by a Chinese individual. The client then attacked this mark by both non-use cancellation and invalidation; it was cancelled and the client’s trademark application for “萨洛蒙小红鞋” in Class 35 was registered. 

King & Wood Mallesons advised Deere & Company and John Deere (China) Investment Co., Ltd., on trademark and unfair competition matters involving multiple types of trademarks, including word marks, device marks and the yellow-and-green colour combination trademarks John Deere uses on tractors. In support of an Rmb10 million (US$1.37 million) damage claim, the firm presented more than 6,000 pages of evidence to prove the good reputation and fame of its client. By using a refined calculation method and based on the probative evidence it collected showing the total amount of retail sales of the alleged infringing product as generated from the agricultural machinery subsidy data, the retailer’s gross margin calculated by the purchase price and retail price of the infringing product as well as the average industry profit rate as indicated in the defendant’s own evidence, KWM successfully persuaded the court to fully support the plaintiffs’ damage claim. 

CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office advised Rolic Technologies in patent invalidation and administrative litigation work. This case relates to a complex field of liquid crystal orientation technology; the focus of the second instance dispute lies in the principle of hearing and inventiveness and was recorded as a classic case in the “Summary of Key Points of the Intellectual Property Court’s Judgments of SPC (2023)”. The court stated that the importance of this case lies in the determination of the invalidation examination procedure violating the principle of hearing. 

CENFO Intellectual Property Agency has four partners and 22 others on its intellectual property team, which represents a diverse range of clients, including Fortune Global 500 companies, China’s Top 500 enterprises, central and state-owned enterprises, research platforms, government agencies and small to medium-sized innovative enterprises. The firm has provided freedom to operate analysis for Shenzhen Jingchuang Jiaxing Technology Co. and provided patent guidance on quantum measurement, flatness of value transmission and digitalization transformation technology for Taiyuan Youte Aoke Electronic Technology Co., which was recognized as an outstanding case. It also drafted a patent application and received the 18th China Patent Excellence Award for TCL Air Conditioner (Zhongshan) Co.  

Kangxin Partners has grown into one of the leading IP firms in China; its head office is in Beijing, and affiliate offices are across the country as well as in Germany, the United States and Japan. The group is structured as four entities providing IP support, litigation, consulting and training services, respectively. In recent months, it has successfully handled a number of important patent prosecution matters for both domestic and global clients. 

Lung Tin Intellectual Property Agent has made remarkable achievements in the past year in terms of patent prosecution work. The firm's patent team has expanded to over 380, more than 40 of whom are dual-qualified patent attorneys and lawyers. The firm has also gained more than 400 new clients to log a total client number of more than 2,500, including about 1,300 international clients. The firm has filed more than 13,000 Chinese national patent applications, over 900 PCT patent applications and over 140 patent invalidation cases. It has also worked with European and U.S. firms to file over 400 European patent applications and over 400 U.S. patent applications on behalf of its domestic clients. It handled one of CNIPA's Top 10 cases of patent re-examination and invalidation in 2023, the DABUS case, involving an artificial intelligence system developed by Stephen L. Thaler, who was represented by Lung Tin. It was the first case determination in China regarding the question of whether artificial intelligence can be registered as a patent inventor.

Unitalen Attorneys at Law has a significant practice in all areas of patents, including patent prosecution, counselling, licensing, contracts, technology transfers and portfolio defense with financial transactions. In the ranking of the number of invention patents granted by agencies, Unitalen has been ranked No. 1 for nine consecutive years. In 2022, Unitalen ranked first with 15,736 patents on the list of “Number of authorized Patent agents for inventions” released by incoPat Innovation Index Research Center. The relevant patents mainly involved in computing/calculation/counting, telecommunications technology and basic electrical components and other technical areas of patent agency. Since the establishment of the China Patent Award, awarded jointly by CNIPA and WIPO, the patents applied for by Unitalen have won awards many times, increasing year by year. Since 2016, 201 patents represented by Unitalen have been honoured with the China Patent Awards, including seven Gold Patent Awards. 

Headquartered in Shanghai, AllBright Law Offices is a full-service law firm founded in 1999 with offices across China. AllBright has significant experience in patent-related administrative procedures and judicial procedures. While providing professional patent-related legal services, the firm also assists clients by feeding into their decisions on corporate patent management from the perspective of strategic management of intellectual properties. Senior partner Song Gao is a key IP litigator at the firm; many of his cases have been extensively reported on by local media, and one of which was selected by the People’s Supreme Court as one of the 10 representative cases of the year. 

China Patent Agent (H.K.) was established in Hong Kong in 1984 is considered one of three pioneering Chinese intellectual property agencies, providing comprehensive IP services to clients in China and abroad. CPA, on behalf of Ericsson, received a favourable 2nd instance judgment from the IP Court of the Supreme Court, which reverses both the 1st instance judgment of Beijing IP Court and the reexamination decision of CNIPA. The subject application relates to a small-formfactor pluggable (SFP) module. The focus of the 2nd instance is whether the subject application possesses inventiveness. In order to facilitate the court’s understanding of the subject application, CPA provided a detailed explanation of the differences between the subject application and the prior art. The court supported the firm’s position. In the 2nd instance judgment, the court affirmed the determination of the distinguishing technical features and held that there was an error in the determination of the technical problem actually solved by Claim 1 in both the reexamination decision and the 1st instance judgment, and the prior art did not provide corresponding inspiration to solve the technical problem. Therefore, the subject application possesses inventiveness. “This outcome holds significant weight, especially considering that the average reversal rate before the Supreme Court for patent administrative cases stands below 6.5 percent,” the firm said. 

King & Wood Mallesons represented Novo Nordisk Semaglutide in compound patent invalidation proceedings at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Semaglutide is a blockbuster drug developed by Novo Nordisk for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and weight loss. Semaglutide is earned more than 80 percent of the total revenue of Novo Nordisk A/S in the first nine months of 2023. Semaglutide injection was approved in China in April 2021, mainly for the treatment of diabetes (the indication for weight loss has not yet been approved). Semaglutide compounds are protected by a patent in China, and the patent rights will expire in March 2026. In order to enjoy the market share of semaglutide as early as possible, in June 2021, a large Chinese generic drug company launched a challenge to the patent of semaglutide compounds, requesting the government to declare the patent of Novo Nordisk invalid, which it did in September 2022, meaning domestic companies could manufacture and sell semaglutide without any restrictions. In December 2022, Novo Nordisk engaged KWM to initiate an administrative lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, requesting the court to revoke the above review decision made by the SIPO. The revision rate of administrative cases involving patent invalidation has been below 10 percent in China for many years, and has remained basically at about 6 percent. The KWM team was thoroughly prepared, and in the first two trials, the collegiate bench gradually understood and accepted its views. However, in view of the technical complexity of the case, for the sake of prudence, the collegiate bench subsequently organized a rare third trial, and finally made a judgment in November 2023, supporting all the firm’s claims, revoking the review decision of the SIPO, and ordering the SIPO to make a new one. 

Sunshine Intellectual Property acted in more than 600 litigation cases; 400 have been concluded, with a success rate of 90 percent. The firm acted as the agent of Zhuhai Guanyu Battery Co., Ltd. in a dispute over infringement of utility model patent rights. The Intermediate People’s Court of Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, made a civil ruling allowing the plaintiff Ningde New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ATL) to withdraw the lawsuit. ATL had filed a lawsuit with the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court, claiming that Zhuhai Guanyu and other companies had infringed on its utility model patent rights, and requested the court to order Zhuhai Guanyu and other companies to stop the infringement and pay Rmb95 million (US$13 million) in compensation. The firm was entrusted by Zhuhai Guanyu to respond to the lawsuit, and went to Fuzhou for three court sessions, exchanged evidence with the other party and conducted on-site inspections. The evidence it provided to the court involved multiple sets of public evidence and prior art defenses, and the public evidence also included the plaintiff ATL’s own products. The plaintiff ATL chose to withdraw the lawsuit after three court hearings. 

Unitalen Attorneys at Law has a significant practice in all areas of patents, including patent prosecution, counselling, licensing, contracts, technology transfers and portfolio defense with financial transactions. The firm’s patent group has more than 180 attorneys representing both domestic and international preparation and prosecution of patent applications before the Chinese Patent Office and foreign patent offices. The firm’s lawyers have extensive experience representing patentees and defending against patent infringement claims in patent litigation cases. 

CENFO Intellectual Property Agency’s copyright application efficiency has seen substantial improvement, and its success rate continues to rise. It has undertaken the agency work for over 5,000 copyright cases, with a remarkable 96.7% success rate, effectively preserving the rights of our clients. The following is a detailed analysis and summary of the characteristics and highlights of our copyright work in the past 12 months, aiming to provide reference and guidance for future endeavours. Copyright protection is the core of its copyright work, involving monitoring, investigation, and responding to copyright infringement activities. This includes monitoring in online, market, and other public domains to identify and report potential copyright infringements. It also provides copyright application services for clients to protect their relevant copyrights, including assisting clients with copyright registration and renewal procedures. Its work includes a significant number of cases in high-tech industries such as electronic information, pharmaceutical sciences, and new energy, accounting for over 80% of the total. This trend reflects the increasing emphasis of high-tech industries on intellectual property protection and is a result of our proactive response to market changes and meeting customer demands. 

The CN-KnowHow IP Group has a team of 400 skilled IP professionals, including over 150 patent and trademark agents. Its attorneys have, on average, more than a decade of experience in the IP field, and 10 are former CNIPA examiners. The firm assisted China Mobile Unlimited in completing copyright registration for software related to public information security. The firm first conducted an in-depth study of the relevant regulations on copyright registration for public information security software, ensuring a precise understanding of legal terms and requirements. It then meticulously reviewed and organized the registration materials provided by the client, checking each document against the regulations to ensure compliance with legal standards. During this process, the firm identified some issues within the materials, such as insufficient technical accuracy in descriptions and non-compliant document formats. It provided detailed suggestions for revisions and engaged in thorough discussions with the client’s R&D team to ensure that the revised materials accurately reflected the software’s technical features and innovations. After multiple rounds of revisions and improvements, the firm assisted the client in preparing compliant registration materials, submitted them to the relevant authorities, and actively monitored the review progress to ensure timely copyright registration. 

Lawyers at Co-Effort Law Firm have a long history of providing clients with service concerning copyright protection, including 49 copyright registrations during 2023. Its lawyers have provided relevant legal counsel services for many well-known enterprises and institutions such as the Publicity Department of Shanghai Municipal Committee, Shanghai Press and Publication Bureau, Shanghai Concert Hall, Shanghai National Opera Center, Shengqu Games, Tencent, Hewlett-Packard Company, etc. In 2001, Legend was introduced into China by Shengqu Games. Through 20 years of operation and promotion, Legend has been built into one of the network cultural IP with continuous influence in the Chinese market. On June 30, 2017, Atos and Lansha Information successfully signed a renewal agreement for the Legend game. Another co-copyright owner of Legend believed that the renewal agreement infringed his copyright, and on August 16, 2017, it applied for a pre-lawsuit injunction to the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court and subsequently filed a lawsuit. On December 17, 2021, the Supreme People’s Court rejected all the appeals of WEMADE Party, and by the end of 2022, WEMADE Party applied for a retrial. On September 23, 2023, the Supreme People’s Court rejected the company’s application for a retrial, and the case was finally settled. The firm has more than 140 partners and more than 550 associates. 

With offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, HongFangLaw is under the leadership of managing partner Xu Zhang. In addition to copyright work, the firm’s services include trademark, patent, court proceedings, licensing, legal risk assessment, contracts, customs and due diligence. 

Copyright civil litigation remains a stable practice for Lung Tin Intellectual Property Agent. In the past year, representative copyright litigation cases handled by Lung Tin include a series of copyright infringement cases between Tencent and various video communication platforms, and the first copyright dispute over the transmission of infringing works by intelligent car entertainment systems in China. The series of copyright infringement cases between Tencent and various video communication platforms involved issues such as algorithm push, copyright liability of video platforms, and breakthrough of the safe harbour rule under the existing laws, which currently have major differences in judicial practice and theoretical research. In recent years, with the rapid rise of short video platforms, short video infringement issues have become increasingly prominent. “The prosperous development of short video platforms cannot be separated from the support and cooperation of the copyright industry. This series of cases is of great significance to the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of copyright holders, the standardization of the behaviour of operators in the short video industry, and the governance of short video infringement platforms. Through this series of cases, adjudication rules are established at the judicial level, and the development of legislation is promoted,” the firm said. 

Advance China IP Law Office (ACIP), founded in 1999, is now one of the largest full-service IP law firms in China with over 1,000 IP professionals. ACIP patent team features 443 patent attorneys and patent engineers, 137 trademark attorneys, 56 litigators, and hundreds of supporting staff, including former patent examiners and senior in-house IP professionals. We have four main offices located in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, one U.S. representative office in Silicon Valley, and eight other branch offices in major cities of China. Chong He is key enforcement lawyer at the firm; before starting his IP career, He worked in a foreign high-tech company as an engineer, which gives him a good understanding of working process of foreign companies. Today, he leads the patent group at ACIP, where he has a strong prosecution practice. He also extends his practice to patent enforcement for international clients. He has participated in many enforcement cases together with the firm’s enforcement department and helped international clients successfully combat counterfeiting that involves patents and trademarks. 

Cheng & Peng Intellectual Property Law Office, a boutique IP law firm located in Beijing, has been providing high-level intellectual property services since its founding in 2013, and is noted for its excellent business skills, strong research capabilities, and expertise in handling international business and complicated cases, particularly those of a cross-border nature. Its clients include not only world-leading universities and research institutes, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors, but also startups worldwide. The highly-trained team of lawyers specializes in the field of life sciences, including biotechnology and medical health. 

In March 2024, the trademark and IP enforcement teams of East IP Limited (formerly SIPS) and Beijing East IP Limited began operating together under the names East IP and 亿思 in Chinese. The firm’s combined trademark, enforcement and litigation teams include over 150 professionals and staff operating primarily from offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Global industry surveys have recognized more than 25 members of its IP team as leading practitioners. The lead partners of East IP’s trademark practice include trademark veterans Joe Simone (the original founder of SIPS), Zhang Yan and Jimmy Huang Jingwen, who recently joined East IP with a team of 36 partners and staff from a “red chip” Chinese law firm in Beijing. 

Intellectual property is one of the core businesses at G&W Partners, a Beijing-based full-service law firm. It has represented a number of civil and commercial disputes with significant social influence in the Supreme People’s Court and domestic courts at all levels, and has obtained favourable judgments for clients. Meanwhile, the firm also has a number of lawyers serving as arbitrators in well-known domestic and foreign arbitration institutions. The firm has not only firmly grasped the traditional core advantages of litigation and arbitration and represented clients in various domestic and foreign litigation and arbitration cases, but also focuses on the cutting edge of China's economic development, enlightening this traditional field and keeping up-to date with the latest news.  

NTD IP Attorneys advised ARaymond in a patent infringement case handled through administrative enforcement in the Suzhou Administration for Market Regulation (AMR). Connectors sold and offered by Suzhou Dsnfu infringed a patent owned by ARaymond. The Suzhou AMR held oral hearings on April 25, 2024, and decided on May 23, 2024. The Suzhou AMR decided that the connectors manufactured, sold and offered by Dsnfu fell into the protection scope of ARaymond’s patent, awarded an injunction against Dsnfu and ordered Dsnfu to destroy the moulds for manufacturing the accused products. Dsnfu destructed all the related moulds under the supervision of NTD’s attorney.  

Ge Cheng & Co is a Beijing-based intellectual property specialist. Its clients include small enterprises, multinational corporations, universities and research institutions and Chinese companies in fields including electronics, biochemistry, engineering, publications, entertainment and education. Managing partner David Cheng has an LL.M. from the Peking University law school and an M.D. from China Medical University and has a past career as a medical researcher. He is a former vice president of NTD Patent & Trademark Agency and a former senior partner at Jeekai & Partners; the firm has handled licensing agreements for both foreign and domestic clients. 

The history of Global Law Office in Beijing dates back to the establishment of the legal consultant office of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade in 1979. The firm was renamed in 1984 to take an international perspective on its business. The firm advised Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co., Ltd., which signed an agreement with Huawei Investment & Holding Co. to acquire all business assets related to the Honor brand. Established in 2013, Honor is a leading global provider of smart devices. The firm provided a comprehensive IP service in the entire transaction, especially in the IP due diligence and negotiation of the transaction documents regarding the important IP asset stripping (patents, trademarks, etc.) from Huawei. 

The IP department at Zhong Lun Law Firm has lawyers as well as trademark and patent agents providing a full range of services including litigation, due diligence, licensing, application, strategizing and portfolio management. The firm has represented clients in a wide range of high-profile and landmark IP cases in China and abroad, and is part of the national effort to build a comprehensive IP protection system for the advancement of the national innovation-driven development strategy. On the international front, the firm has taken on numerous projects under the Belt and Road Initiative and advised multinational companies on strategic IP protection plans. Its IP team boasts an extensive bench of prominent practitioners with both technical background and industrial experience, including former judges and CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) patent examiners who have many years’ trial or patent examination experience. 

An invention patent handled by AFD China Intellectual Property Office was awarded the Gold Prize in the 24th China Patent Awards jointly conducted by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2023. This award is based on comprehensive evaluation of patentability, the quality of the patent documents, technological advancement, application and protection measures and effectiveness, social benefits and development prospects. During the process of drafting the application for this invention patent, the firm had had extensive communication with the inventors to thoroughly understand the implementation details of the technical disclosure, which allowed it to determine the roles and technical effects of different technical features. Based on this understanding, it conducted a pre-filing search and identified the technical problem that this application aimed to solve by combining the relevant prior art with the inventors’ technical solution. It then constructed independent claims incorporating the selected technical features that address the identified technical problem. “Furthermore, we strategically structured the dependent claims based on the functions and effects of other technical features at different levels,” a representative said. “During the drafting of the detailed embodiments, we analyzed the effects of technical solutions corresponding to independent and dependent claims at the technical level and further illustrated such technical solutions by providing three implementation examples in different scenarios. This comprehensive approach ensured the thorough protection of our client's technical solutions from various angles and at various dimensions.” 

Intellectual property is HengDu Law Firm’s cornerstone business. The firm provided full-process legal services for Lv Shousheng’s copyright infringement lawsuit in which the court ruled that Huaxia Cornerstone, one of the Top 10 consulting firms in China, had infringed on Shousheng’s right to modify his book Strategy Decoding, and that it should apologize and pay Rmb10,000 (US$1,375) in compensation for the loss on its public website. The judgment identified Shousheng’s originality of the content of the book and laid a legal foundation for his and the company’s next step of trademark defense, exclusion of unfair competition rivals, and the recognition of well-known trademarks. It also represented Chengfeng Wu in a copyright infringement and unfair competition civil dispute with Tencent, which was the first game UGC content case involving the definition of the nature of the platform’s subject matter and the question of whether a natural person user can act as an operator under the Unfair Competition Law. 

Haiwen & Partners’ intellectual property practice covers the full spectrum of intellectual property disciplines including patent, trademarks and trade names, domain names, copyrights (including software), trade secrets and integrated circuit layout design. It also handles intellectual property related antitrust and competition issues, etc. The firm’s core members have extensive experience in managing civil and administrative litigations, administrative proceedings and criminal investigations, as well as application analysis of IP rights and complex transactions involving international intellectual property right licenses and transfers. In recent years, its IP lawyers have successfully handled a number of influential intellectual property cases. The firm has established an all-round legal service system for intellectual property rights practice, featuring patent protection and dispute resolution, trademark confirmation and dispute resolution, copyright protection and dispute resolution, know-how protection and dispute resolution and general legal advice on intellectual property. 

Founded in the early 1990s, Jingtian & Gongcheng is a full-service business law firm headquartered in Beijing. JTGC advised a leading Chinese public blockchain institution Conflux and the digital platform under it, Taopai, to provide various legal and compliance services, to safeguard the business in a healthy and sustainable way. JTGC was involved in NFT projects including but not limited to project structuring and planning, especially the platform/shop module, and various NFTs in art, fashion, sports, games, banking services, movie and TV plays, including commercial projects including advising, drafting agreements, dispute resolution, intellectual property rights protection and anti-infringement handling, etc. It also assisted Intchains to structure, build up and manage its IP assets. The company had previously lacked IP awareness and an IP strategy. JTGC advised Intchains from a fight against a malicious U.S. trademark registration application, then assisted it to structure, build up and manage its trademark assets in various jurisdictions, not only to get them protected, but also as a defense for malicious stealing of its IP assets and properties. 

JunHe is a full-service firm that is home to over a thousand professionals, including more than 240 partners and legal counsels and 640 associates and legal translators. Its Beijing head office is supported by 12 branches and fully-licensed offices across China as well as New York and Silicon Valley. The firm has represented the Chinese affiliate of iRobot Corporate in patent infringement litigation and supported BMW Group in its entire trademark process in China. 

With offices in 11 major Chinese cities, Beijing-based Wanhuida Intellectual Property is now home to 50 IP-related partners, who handle trademark and patent issues including litigation and enforcement. Partner Jason Yao has been highly regarded by clients for profound knowledge of IP issues, and comprehensive approach in dealing with complex legal issues.  

Bonzone IP is a boutique IP agency, specializing in legal affairs relating to intellectual property for domestic and foreign clients. The firm has filed and prosecuted trademark applications, oppositions, appeals, invalidations and other trademark cases with the CNIPA, and prosecuted nearly 100 administrative and infringement litigations on behalf of domestic and foreign clients. “What we are proud of is, the successful rates for our clients’ trademark applications, dispute cases and litigations are comparatively high, which are satisfied and appreciated by clients,” the firm said. The firm has also filed and prosecuted hundreds of patent cases in China, most of which were smoothly granted. 

Shanghai YaoWang Law Offices has, in the past year, secured victories in 11 trademark administrative litigations involving invalidations, non-use cancellations, and review of refusals. It has also won three anti-unfair competition cases and successfully secured monetary compensation for its clients. The firm has represented Xiaomi, Point72, Aspect Capital, Barings, West Union and other companies for the enforcement-related work, including domain name dispute resolution, infringing contents take-downs, and other enforcement-related works. We have achieved favourable outcomes for our clients in seven of eight domain name dispute cases brought before DNDRC and ADNDRC and has represented numerous fund companies in combating defamatory articles and infringement online, successfully removing the infringing content. In the past 12 months, the firm has welcomed four new partners with diverse expertise. It is based in the Lujiazui free trade district of Pudong, Shanghai. 

Shichao Guo, the founder of Way Insight, foresaw the need for cross-border intellectual property services during his time with market-leading firm CCPIT. Consequently, the firm, which opened in 2017, still strives to be the single point-of-contact for its clients by connecting intellectual property service providers around the world. The firm has filed more than 9,000 designs, 1,800 patents and 2,500 trademarks in 79 countries or regions around the world. Guo’s clients include Alibaba, China Telecom, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Firm co-founder Ellen Han previously served as general counsel at China Post Capital Management Corporation and Vanke Service, a subsidiary of China Vanke Co., Ltd, a Fortune Global 500 company. Han specializes in identifying legal risks and issues in distribution, finance and human resources. 

Headquartered in Shenzhen, Zhiheng Law Firm has branches in Guangzhou and Shenzhen Longgan, and has plans to open nearly 10 more offices throughout China. Over the past year or so, by bringing in a large number of skilled lawyers from across China, the firm has enjoyed rapid expansion and thus built a stronger and more diversified network of multi-disciplinary professionals. Once a boutique law firm, it has successfully transformed itself into a full-service law firm. The firm has won seven national and 36 provincial, municipal and district-level awards, including National Excellent Lawyer, National Outstanding Lawyer Party Member, and “Outstanding Contribution Award” of the Information Network and High-tech Law Committee of the National Lawyers Association. The firm’s trademark infringement case of “If You Are the One” was selected as a typical intellectual property case in China by the Supreme Court, and was listed as the number one case of the Top 10 Most Research-worthy Intellectual Property Cases in China. 

Shenzhen-based Purplevine IP is a global-facing IP service provider, dedicated to building a bridge for international innovation collaboration and IP value realization. The firm provides one-stop, full-service patent solutions to our clients, covering global patent prosecution, IP analysis and consulting, IP investment, IP transactions, licensing, enforcement and dispute resolution. The firm has more than 400 team members, located in 10 offices worldwide. As an internationally integrated IP service provider with a solid footing in both law and technology, Purplevine offers a wide selection of professional, innovative and practical solutions to meet its clients’ needs.