Firm — Est. 2010
One firm, from application to courtroom.
How a small Beijing practice built its institutional depth without growing past a size any partner could still personally oversee.
Kingsright IP Attorneys was founded by Lily LIN in Beijing on 21 September 2010. Before founding the firm, Ms. LIN spent more than a decade inside CNIPA itself — as a re-examiner on the Patent Re-examination Board, and as an investigator in its legal-affairs and administration departments, leading several internal patent-analysis projects. The firm's founding perspective is therefore not external commentary on Chinese patent examination, but direct experience of how it is actually conducted.
In 2019, the practice was strengthened by the addition of two partners. Minjun CAI began his own patent career in 1984 — a year before China's current Patent Law took effect — first at the CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office, then from 1993 as patent attorney and head of the mechanical department at China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd., before co-founding a separate IP firm as senior partner. Across four decades he has handled thousands of applications and led dozens of administrative and infringement suits as lead attorney. Erwin TAN, practicing since 2008, brought one of the widest technical ranges at the firm — from computer science and semiconductors to automotive and turbine engineering to medical devices — together with a particular concentration in patent invalidation and the litigation that follows it, and a practice that has since grown to include generative AI. Their arrival extended Kingsright's institutional depth beyond its founding generation while keeping the firm small enough for any partner to oversee personally.
Kingsright operates as a general partnership: the partners bear personal, unlimited joint liability for the firm's professional obligations, by design, not as a technicality. The practice remains deliberately small. Kingsright has not organized itself into branded practice groups or built an associate-leverage structure in which junior staff carry client work under a partner's name. Every current patent attorney and technical practitioner is named, with a full profile, on this site's People page.