On May 20, the high-end legal magazine under Thomson Reuters – Asian Legal Business published its 2022 ALB China IP Rankings. Watson & Band is again recognized as a Tier 2 firm in both “Patent” and “Copyright/Trademark” areas for its professional services, good reputation and outstanding performance in the intellectual property area.

Throughout the years Watson & Band has been presenting excellence in both contentious and non-contentious practices in patents, trademarks and copyrights areas. We have been taking the lead on the IP rankings of various well-known legal ranking agencies. This year, two of our IP cases were selected as exemplary cases by the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

On April 24, the case involving compensation for damages arising from malicious IP litigation that Watson & Band’s Partner Joe Liu and his team represented for the rights holder was selected by the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court as a “2021 Top 10 Exemplary Case”. This case studied on how the rights holder could seek further economic remedies after it encountered malicious litigation by the other party, and explored a referential approach for similar cases in future.

On April 25, the other procuratorial supervision case over a retrial judgment of a trademark infringement case that Watson & Band’s Partner Joe Liu and his team represented for the rights holder was selected by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate as one of the “Exemplary Cases Reflecting the People’s Procuratorates’ Protection for IP rights to Safeguard Innovation-driven Development”. It is the first time in China to initiate retrial procedure through the prosecutorial supervision procedure against a case that has already been retried.

Asian Legal Business, a high-end legal journal published by the Thomson Reuters Group, is one of the most authoritative benchmarks in the legal industry. In order to publish fair and transparent IP practice rankings, ALB conducted comprehensive assessments of the candidates based on information collected from data, interviews, newspapers, periodicals and market recommendations submitted by participating law firms.