Interview with: Chuanhong Long, President, CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office

What do you see as the main points that differentiate CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office from your competitors?

Our firm is the oldest and one of the largest full-service intellectual property law firms in China. We have more than 300 patent and trademark attorneys. Our mission is to render tailored services to clients with high quality, efficiency and reliability in a cost-effective manner. Our attorneys are dedicated to providing high-quality services to our clients at home and abroad. After more than 60 years development, our reputation for professionalism is widely recognized among peer professionals and clients, both domestically and internationally.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

In view of the difficulty of determining the damages in intellectual property infringement including trade secret infringement cases, judicial cases show a trend of using economic analysis tools to perform calculations. What is reflected behind it is the judicial attitude of Chinese courts to enhance IP protection and to award damages more precisely. It is believed that the trend will continue in the coming year and is worthy of attention.

In the patent domain, we think the patent applications in some specific technical fields may grow in the next months. One example is metauniverse-related applications since the concept of metauniverse has been very popular recently. We expect the patent applications in the fields of AR, VR and Al vision will have a significant increase. Another example is autonomous driving. In recent years, autonomous driving, including unmanned driving and assisted driving, has developed very rapidly. Both large automobile manufacturers and internet companies have made a lot of research and development efforts. As autonomous driving is moving towards marketization, patent applications related to autonomous driving, especially standard essential patents (SEPs), may see a relatively large increase.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

We set up a new branch office in Shenzhen to provide one-stop service for local clients, especially the clients in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Besides, we reorganized our litigation teams to cover all litigation matters and IP search and analysis, especially patent litigation, trademark litigation and copyright litigation.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

The wide use of video conferences not only facilitates our contact with customers but also facilitates the customers to participate in the oral hearing of intellectual property cases. The clients and the witnesses can attend the oral hearing from abroad. It greatly improves the efficiency of the trial.

In addition, the firm has invested a lot in enhancing the process management system and improving the security of the computer system. After having achieved a paperless office, we are striving to improve the efficiency of our work by using new technology.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

Earlier in 2023, the firm’s Wuhan office was opened, which means that we are able to provide more tailored services for our clients in and around the central China area.

Besides, we continue to enhance our litigation group by pooling the firm’s professional resources. Our litigation division now includes the patent litigation department, trademark and copyright litigation department and legal department. This division has handled many significant dispute cases covering all IP areas.

Once one of our customer’s trademarks was squatted by a competitor on related goods, we formulated and adopted a combined rights protection strategy comprehensively proving that our customer’s prior trademark was well-known in China, and thereby canceled the competitor’s trademark registration on related goods. Our customer instead successfully registered the trademark on the related goods and safely expanded its business to the market of the related goods, and obtained a new profit growth point.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

Yes, a number of clients would like to get stability and strategic direction from their law firms.

We see the firm will relatively maintain stable incoming cases for overseas clients and a rapid development in IP cases for domestic clients.