Lifang & Partners

Intellectual Property

Senior Partner

Mr Yu is a licensed lawyer, patent attorney and senior partner of Lifang & Partners. He is also author of several practitioners’ guides to patent law, which have been well received by readers. His books include The Guidance of Patent Practice which is used by many who are studying for the Chinese patent bar. Mr Yu worked as an IP professional at CNIPA and some multinational companies including Samsung. He has practised intellectual property law for 20 years with 3 of those years being overseas. Mr Yu has gained significant insights from his experience in handling IP matters of great international influence. Many of the cases that he led or participated in have been selected as Supreme People’s Court Top 10 IP Cases and Chinese Court Typical 50 IP Cases, Typical Cases of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on its 5th Anniversary, and so forth. Mr Yu has also been ranked in Chambers, ALB, Intellectual Asset Management (IAM), the Legal 500 and China Business Law Journal. Mr Yu has abundant experience in intellectual property litigation, patent re-examination and invalidation, antitrust reviews and litigation, as well as trade secret and technical contract disputes. In addition, Mr Yu also handles many non-contentious matters, including long-term advisory services, IP counselling, IP due diligence investigation, IP risk warning and analysis, cross-licensing, patent standardization, equity-based incentive policy design, and other matters.

Cases

- MTK v. NXP: Mr. Yu is a leading counsel for MTK. This case is expected to be a most noteworthy patent litigation case in the semiconductor industry.

- Samsung v. Ericsson: This was the second time ever that a Chinese court granted an anti-suit injunction in a global SEP rate-setting dispute. Because both parties are famous multinationals, this milestone dispute caught a lot of media attention. In May 2021, Samsung and Ericsson reached a settlement covering ‘all cellular technologies’, which took effect retrospectively.

- Sony v Global Innovation Aggregators: Mr. Yu was a leading counsel representing Sony and won in all of 4 lawsuits. This is by far the first large-scale lawsuits brought by a well-known foreign NPE in China.

- IBM v. Insight Value: This case is notable for the largest number of patents involved in the ownership dispute cases ever accepted by a court in recent years. In this case, Mr. Yu was a leading counsel defending Insight Value. A creative "relevance" test put forward by the defence team, which was adopted by the court and based on which the court dismissed all claims of the plaintiff.

- Samsung v. Holley Communications: This Patent Dispute regarding CDMA/GSM Dual Mode Mobile Communication Method was included in the Top 10 IP Cases of Zhejiang High People’s Court in 2012.

- Sogou v. Baidu: Mr Yu and his team acted for Sogou in a series of cases what have been called “the first patent infringement cases in the Chinese internet industry”. This series of cases arose from a range of invention patent disputes and one of them was included in the Supreme People’s Court’s Typical 50 IP Cases of 2018. The series of cases were also named “Deals of 2020” by China Business Law Journal, and Typical Cases of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on its 5th Anniversary (only two patent cases were included).

- Sunny Optics v. AAC Optics: This is the first large-scale patent dispute in the field of optics. More than 30 lawsuits were filed in this case, and the claim for compensation is up to hundreds of million. It is regarded as a representative case relating to optical patents.

- Ronbay Technology v. Umicore: Mr. Yu is defending Ronbay against Umicore’s patent infringement lawsuits where the claim for compensation is more than 3 hundred billion. This patent dispute is regarded as a significant case relating to lithium battery patents.

- 360 v. 2345.com: This was named a Top 10 Patent Case of 2018 by people.cn. And this also was selected as "Deals of the Year" by China Business Law Journal in 2020.

- Ele.me v. Meituan: Mr. Yu is handling a series of cases between Ele.me and Meituan including patent invalidation and patent infringement. So far, it is the first and the only patent dispute between these two e-commerce platform magnates. The matter is currently pending before the court.

- Xuhong v. AGC: Mr. Yu was a leading counsel representing Xuhong, assisted the client in having all patents-in-suit declared invalid as well as winning more than RMB 10 million damages award in a parallel anti-unfair competition case. This case was selected into the "Deals of the Year" by China Business Law Journal in 2021.

- Mobike v. DiDi: This battle between two bike-sharing behemoths was included in the Top 10 Typical Cases of 2018 by people.cn.

- Geek + v. Hai Robotics: Mr. Yu handled the patent disputes about patent invalidation and patent infringement between Geek+ and Hai Robotics. This case is listed in the Summary of Judgments of the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court (2022), being regarded as a representative case in the field of moving robots.

- Segway-Ninebot v. Phoenix Bicycle: This case is expected to be a highly influential reference case in the self-balancing scooter industry because the two litigants are both leaders in the self-balancing scooter and conventional bicycle industries, and a large number of infringing products are involved.

- KUNER v. several smartphone battery companies: Mr. Yu handled a series of cases on behalf of KUNER against several smartphone battery companies, including patent invalidation and patent infringement cases. Based on a same patent, several battery suppliers were sued for patent infringement, The client has won all of the cases and received compensation. The validity of the disputed patent was challenged for 10 times and has been upheld as valid every time, thanks to the professional defense of Mr Yu and the Lifang & Partners patent team. An outcome of this disputes is that the disputed patent has become a well-recognized high-value patent.

- IPO Projects: Assisted Segway-Ninebot (Stock Code: 689009), Double Medical (Stock Code: 002901) and other companies in completing their respective IPO process; represented Speechocean in responding to invalidity challenges by competitors against its core patents during the IPO examination process, having all of the 10 patents involved maintained valid and thus overcoming the greatest obstacle in the IPO process.

- Patent analysis Projects: Provided patent analysis services for Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Ant Financial, Xiaomi, Tsinghua Unigroup, Midea, Mobai, Sogou, 360 Qihoo, Goldwind, CSCEC, J-Invest, CAST and other companies; assisted Mobike in obtaining Domestic Patent Early Warning Program funding from Haidian District, Beijing for its "Intelligent Lock Patent Early Warning"; assisted Geek+ in obtaining Overseas Intellectual Property Early Warning Program funding from Beijing municipal government for its Unmanned and Intelligent Warehousing relating Solutions.

- Patent license and transaction projects: Supported patent licensing and transaction deals of Intel, ZTE, OPPO, Datang Telecom, NTT, TIVO, General Treatment, CITIC Guoan, and other companies.

- Moot court projects: Provided IP enforcement training services for in-house IP teams of BOE and SK Hynix.

Chinese/English/Korean

- Member and Deputy Executive Director of the Secretariat of the Network Committee of the China IP Society, CNIPA

- Consultant with the CNIPA Patent Information Service Center

- Member of Intellectual Property Advisers of Haidian District Government

- Mediator of China Patent Protection Association

- Member of China Intellectual Property Society

- External expert of IP International Exchange of Hainan

- LLD, IP Law, Law School of Nanjing University

- LLM, IP Law, Law School of Nanjing University

- BEng, Engineering, Jilin University