A general practice firm, Lee Tsai & Partners has a full-service IP team that can advise on matters in areas including patents, trade marks, copyright, trade secrets and industrial designs. The team expanded this year with one counsel and four associates joining, one of whom is a former assistant trade mark examiner at the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). Some of its representative clients include Lenovo Technology, Industrial Technology Research Institute and Taiwan Synthetic Rubber Corporation.
Litigation is a key strength of the firm and many of its cases are groundbreaking. For instance, senior partner Jaclyn Tsai is leading the team in a trade mark and company name infringement case for a private bank. After merging with another bank, the client changed its name to a combination of the two banks' marks, but a third party changed its name into one similar to the client's original mark and filed a non-use cancellation against that mark. The case deals with the maintenance of well-known brands or registered marks that have been merged with other well-known brands or registered marks.
The firm is also handling the issue of free software and public licences. Tsai is representing a free software/open source software provider in negotiations with a licensor and is responding to the licensor's allegation of infringement of the public licence due to amendments made to the public licence.