Lifang & Partners

Intellectual Property/Antitrust and Unfair Competition/Dispute Resolution

Senior Partner

Managing Partner

Mr Xie’s major practice areas include intellectual property disputes, antitrust and competition law, and consultancy for hi-tech companies. He has gained a high reputation in these areas with his solid academic background, government experience and professional dedication. He is winner of the first Outstanding Achievement Award at the 1st Science & Technology Law Awards from the National Office for Science & Technology Awards; Beijing’s Top 10 Intellectual Property Lawyers elected by the Beijing Bar Association, Chambers Band 1 Leading Individual, Managing Intellectual Property IP Star, and has been consistently acclaimed as top practitioner in Legal 500 and other league tables in intellectual property and antitrust fields. Clients have found him “very strategic, experienced and responsive” and have praised him for his “standout presentation, attention to detail and sound advocacy skills.” Mr Xie’s advisory activities in the technology industry include providing long term legal services to many notable multi-national enterprises and institutions including Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Samsung, Tetra Pak, Heinz, Solvay, Trend Micro, Tencent, Xiaomi, VIVO, DJI, China Unicom, PICC, China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Corporation, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), and others. Mr Xie has successfully represented clients in many important IP cases: For trademark disputes, he successfully helped Gome to obtain a declaration that “Gome” was a well-known trademark; he helped China’s biggest property insurance company to claim the domain name “PICC”; he managed Danone China’s trademark disputes with “Wahaha”; and he handled “The Voice of China” disputes. For patent disputes, Mr Xie has successfully acted in Samsung v. Huawei, Midea v. Gree, Sogou v. Baidu, Xiaomi v. Coolpad, a case in which a transnational company claimed major damages for a series of core patent infringements; and a case involving a well-known telecom corporation for billions of RMB in royalties. In copyright actions, he has, among other things, successfully defended a famous Taiwanese finance software company against accusations of infringement before the Supreme People’s Court; represented Yahoo in managing MP3 infringement disputes with international record companies; and represented a number of international software companies to claim damages in various litigations. In anti-unfair competition actions, he represented a listed company in a trade secret infringement case to claim RMB 100 million in damages; represented a US and EU based wind power company to claim almost RMB 3 billion damages for the misappropriation of trade secrets; represented an electronic appliance company in a dispute over a company name and trademarks; handled a competition case arising from the movie Lost in Thailand; and resolved a dispute relating to the false advertisement by Guazi.com. For antitrust matters, he participated in a number of influential merger control filings; participated in the NDRC’s antitrust investigations into LCD panels, milk powder, IDC, the automobile industry, Qualcomm chips, roll-roll, Maersk container shipping cases, and memory chips. He successfully handled China’s first anti-trust lawsuit representing CNC; represented Qihoo 360 in the second instance of the antitrust case against Tencent (which was the first antitrust case heard by the Supreme People’s Court); and defended TETRA PAK in an abuse of dominant market position case (China’s first antitrust case filed after an administrative penalty decision). Mr. Xie has extensive experience in the intersection of intellectual property and competition, particularly in the area of Standard Essential Patents (SEPs), where he has been fully involved in many leading cases, including the earlier Qualcomm cases, HDMI, Dolby and IDG cases, the later SEP injunction and rate-setting disputes in the mobile phone area, such as Samsung v. Huawei series cases, Xiaomi v. IDG series cases, Samsung v. Ericsson series cases, VIVO v. Nokia series cases, and Xiaomi v. Huawei, and currently automobile SEP disputes. Mr. Xie was deeply involved in many SEP licensing negotiations. He participated, as legal expert, in several legislative projects in the area. Mr Xie once worked with the Policy and Legislation Division of the State Science and Technology Commission and the State Council Intellectual Property Conference Office, where he participated in the drafting and revision of state intellectual property and technology legislation and policies. He participated in bilateral IP negotiations with the US, Japan, the EU and Russia. From 1999 to 2002, he was Director of Huake Judicial Examination Centre for Intellectual Property, an appraisal institution established with the approval of the Ministry of Justice, where he was responsible for providing a great number of advisory and appraisal opinions on complicated IP cases to the Supreme People’s Court and other courts. He founded Lifang & Partners in 2002.

Chinese/English

- Member of the Expert Consultation Committee (Beijing) of the IP Case Guidance and Study Base of the Supreme People's Court

- Member of the Experts Committee for Civil and Administrative Litigation Cases of the Supreme Procuratorate

- Arbitrator for WIPO

- Expert of the Asia Domain Name Disputes Resolution Centre at HKIAC

- Expert of the Domain Name Disputes Resolution Center, China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC)

- Arbitrator of the Beijing Arbitration Commission and International Commercial Arbitrator of the Beijing Arbitration Commission

- Arbitrator of the Wuhan Arbitration Commission

- Arbitrator of the Nanjing Arbitration Commission

- Arbitrator of the Chongqing Arbitration Commission

- Arbitrator for the Zhuhai Arbitration Commission

- Tutor for graduates, Tsinghua University

- Research fellow of the Competition Law Research Center, Peking University

- Research fellow of the International Intellectual Property Research Center, Peking University

- Part-time Research Fellow of IP and Competition Law Research Institute, Wuhan University

- Legal counsel to the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee

- Legal Expert for the Beijing Dongcheng District Government

- Executive Director of the China Law Association on Science and Technology

- Director of the Beijing Intellectual Property Association

- Member of the Intellectual Property Commission of the All China Lawyers Association

- Arbitrator of the Hainan International Arbitration Court

- LLD, Economic Law, Law School of Peking University

- LLM, Economic Law, Law School of Wuhan University

- LLB, Economic Law, Law School of Wuhan University

- Advanced studies on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer (Japan)

- Intern lawyer with Chandler LLP (USA)