On May 20, the high-end legal journal Asian Legal Business under Thomson Reuters (hereinafter “ALB”) published in 2020 ALB China IP Rankings. Watson & Band ranked in Tier 2 for both “China Domestic Firms: Patent” and “China Domestic Firms: Trademarks/Copyrights”.

On May 21, ALB announced the finalists for its 2020 China Law Awards. Watson & Band is honored a finalist for the two awards – “IP Firm of the Year” and “Shanghai Firm of the Year”. 

In recent years, Watson & Band’s patent and trademark/copyright litigation teams have made great accomplishments and have been taking the lead on the rankings of many renowned legal media. Moreover, a number of patent and trademark cases in which Watson & Band represented industry magnates were selected as top or landmark cases of the year by the Supreme People’s Court or the local Higher People’s Courts.

In 2019, a patent infringement case of Watson & Band was selected into the Supreme People’s Court’s 2018 Annual Report on IP Cases. The Supreme Court specially pointed out the guiding significance of that case in terms of the criteria for determining joint infringement and the identification of contributory infringement under the patent law.

In the same year, a retrial case of Watson & Band, which involved bad-faith trademark registration and litigation on that basis, was selected by the Supreme People’s Court as one of the “2018 Top 10 IP Cases in China Courts”. The Supreme Court explicitly instructs that acquiring trademark rights out of bad faith and utilizing the trademark rights to claim unjustifiable interests would not be protected by the law. This case incorporates typical significance in terms of building a well-ordered environment for trademarks, purifying the market situation and curbing bad-faith litigation based on trademark rights acquired through improper means.

In 2020, the “MLGB” trademark invalidation case initiated by one of Watson & Band’s lawyers was again selected by the Supreme People’s Court as one of the “2019 Top 10 IP Cases in China Courts”.  The Supreme Court points out in its commentary that the issuance of the retrial judgment for this case makes a good demonstration effect that helps purify the Internet environment and curbs the pursuit after vulgarity by hitting the edge ball; in addition, this case also demonstrates the judicial authority’s responsibilities for inheriting mainstream cultural awareness and guiding values.

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.