About

Based in Asia for more than 14 years, James Evans moved from a highly successful private practice career – during which he established a reputation as an IP specialist – into the in-house role he currently occupies with Linfox International Group in 2014. Regarding his strong focus on IP, Evans says, ‘I don’t think it is a coincidence that a fair amount of IP lawyers make the transition from private practice to in-house. Practising IP law brings you into contact with many different types of matters, from labour, to corporate and commercial, litigation and you become well attuned to advising across different types of industries. IP lawyers therefore tend to be fairly agile – a key requirement for in-house roles’. Evans has had an eventful in-house career, with one of the most notable transactions he has been involved with being the milestone joint venture with Boon Rawd Brewery in Thailand to take over Singha’s beer and water distribution network. Evans led the negotiation, set up and all legal, labour, IP and commercial matters for the transaction, a highly intricate and complex project, but also one that he considers to be highly enjoyable, if time-consuming: ‘This matter has taken over the last year of my working life. The nature of the JV was, right from the start, family led, as both companies involved, despite their size, remain family businesses. This meant that the deal was an extremely cooperative and friendly one, with my role involved in every aspect from day one. Whilst the JV was built on the spirit of collaboration, it was important to protect the interests of our company, particularly when it came to potential conflicts of interest in overlapping logistics markets and existing and future customers of both Linfox and the new JV company. Pragmatism was important to enable the new JV to flourish’.