Jinghe Gao

Attorney Jinghe Gao, a senior partner and Director of Zhong Yin Law Firm’s National Intellectual Property (IP) Professional Committee and IP Department, has built a distinguished career since 2008 specializing in agricultural and industrial IP. He is renowned for handling landmark cases that established industry benchmarks and received top national recognitions, including designation as "Guiding Cases of the Supreme People’s Court," inclusion in the "Supreme People’s Court’s Guidelines on Intellectual Property Trials," selection among the "Top 100 Cases of the SPC IP Tribunal in Five Years," listing in the "Annual Outstanding Cases of the National People’s Courts" and accolades as a "Top Ten IP Case in Chinese Courts" and "Benchmark Case of the Year." His strategic legal acumen has earned exceptional client recognition while providing critical judicial references for the IP field. Attorney Gao is consistently ranked among China’s elite IP litigators, recognized as a "Recommended Lawyer" in Chambers Greater China (2025, IP Litigation), named a LEGALBAND "China Top Ranked Lawyer" for IP Litigation (2025) and twice as a "Client Choice Top 15" lawyer for both IP and Competition Law (2024), honored as one of "China’s Top 50 Elite IP Lawyers Under 50," featured in the "Premium IP Legal Service Brands Guide (2023)," awarded "Master Craftsmanship Lawyer" in Dispute Resolution (2024), and named to LegalOne’s "Client-Trusted Top 15 IP Lawyers" and "Stellar Accolade" for Trade Secrets (2024). Beyond litigation, he bridges the judiciary and academia through prominent roles including Expert for Legal Daily and Xinhua Net legal think tanks, Overseas IP Protection Expert for China (Shenzhen) IP Protection Center, IP Legal Expert for the Shenzhen Software Industry Association, inaugural Overseas Dispute Resolution Expert for Dongguan IP Protection Center, Foreign-related Legal Expert for Ganzhou CCPIT, Arbitrator for the Zhengzhou Arbitration Commission, mentor for CUPL, Shenzhen University, and inclusion in Futian District’s Legal Expert Database, significantly enhancing industry influence and promoting vital academic-judicial exchange in IP protection.

• Burner Technology - China Rights Protection and Global IP Strategic Deployment Project: When a sales VP's resignation triggered an exodus of engineers and staff to a competing firm—which immediately filed competing patents threatening hundreds of millions in market share and endangering a critical Hong Kong IPO—the client engaged Zhong Yin's Attorney Jinghe Gao for emergency IP litigation and pre-IPO safeguards. Confronted by extreme complexity involving Honeywell UOP-derived combustion technology for petrochemical waste treatment (high-value trade secrets spanning technical/business domains) and multi-layered infringement patterns, Gao's team pioneered a pragmatic strategy: deferring contentious trade secret claims to first resolve patent ownership and damages through a package settlement, while simultaneously guiding the client to implement comprehensive IP protection protocols. This approach proved transformative—winning millions in direct compensation and reclaiming patent control to preserve billion-dollar market share. Crucially, it enabled the client’s successful July 2024 Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing by eliminating IPO roadblocks. Beyond immediate commercial rescue, the case established landmark jurisprudence: Supreme People's Court (SPC) rulings clarified standards for post-employment customer information misuse, injunction criteria, non-compete/secret protection interplay, and damages calculation models for trade secrets. These outcomes earned dual recognition in the All China Lawyers Association’s "Annual Report on China's IP Lawyers" and the SPC's "People’s Justice" journal, with the case further selected among the SPC IP Tribunal’s "Top 100 Representative Cases" commemorating its fifth anniversary—solidifying its status as a guiding precedent for safeguarding innovation while navigating corporate transitions. Extensive coverage by China Science and Technology Network and China Intellectual Property News underscored its role in affirming strategic IP litigation’s power to defend market leadership during existential threats.
• Singapore Water Treatment Membrane Patent Technology and Trade Secrets Cross-Border IP Protection:  Singapore Water Treatment Membrane Patent Technology and Trade Secrets Cross-Border IP Protection:  Attorney Jinghe Gao successfully defended a multinational water treatment corporation against systemic IP theft by its Chief Technology and Business Officer, who secretly established a competing entity and misappropriated proprietary process formulas to file patents in China. Confronting cross-jurisdictional complexity spanning China and Singapore, Gao initiated over 10 coordinated lawsuits to combat patent infringement and unfair competition. The case presented critical challenges: divergent legal systems, involvement of high-level executives, and ambiguous boundaries between technical and business secrets (covering core membrane formulas and pricing systems). Gao engineered an innovative protection strategy, directing parallel civil and criminal proceedings across both jurisdictions while systematically implementing domestic measures. This multilayered approach achieved comprehensive results: (1) Reclaiming eight core membrane technology patents; (2) Securing judicial recognition for technical secrets (process parameters) and business secrets (pricing systems); (3) Obtaining criminal convictions against the CTO in both countries alongside civil compensation liabilities for the CBO; and (4) Defeating the competitor’s malicious litigation attempts. The landmark outcome preserved the client’s hundreds of millions CNY market share in Southeast Asia while establishing a benchmark for multinational IP enforcement. Gao’s strategic design—pioneering simultaneous transnational civil-criminal prosecution—not only halted cross-border infringement but effectively deterred future violations. This case exemplifies sophisticated IP asset protection for global enterprises, earning recognition in the 2024 LegalOne Client Trusted Lawyers "Top 15 IP Lawyers (Blue Ribbon)" list and currently nominated for a Belt and Road Legal Services Typical Case Award. Beyond recovering critical IP assets and securing financial remedies, the victory demonstrated China’s robust protection of foreign enterprises’ intellectual property rights while showcasing Gao’s exceptional capacity to navigate complex multinational legal landscapes.
• Patent Infringement and Unfair Competition Between Two Smart Logistics Robot Unicorn Enterprises:  Attorney Jinghe Gao resolved a complex intellectual property war between two ¥10B+ smart logistics robotics unicorns (each holding ~1,000 patents) locked in global competition for billions in market share. Since 2019, mutual patent infringement lawsuits had escalated to invalidation proceedings and unfair competition litigation across multiple Chinese jurisdictions. When engaged, Gao faced 14 pending patent infringement/invalidation suits and 4 unfair competition cases nationwide, compounded by three critical challenges: divergent regional court procedures requiring precise fact-mapping, technical-legal complexity spanning patent and competition law, and deeply entrenched commercial hostility impeding settlement. Gao implemented a breakthrough dual strategy—vigorously defending all active lawsuits while identifying synergistic business opportunities between the rivals. His team meticulously deconstructed the dispute’s root causes and coordinated with all presiding courts to pursue mediation. Crucially recognizing the parties’ complementary technologies and shared industry interests, Gao engineered a transformative resolution: converting litigation adversaries into collaborative partners through cross-licensing agreements that terminated all 18+ pending cases. This comprehensive settlement eliminated global litigation risks (extending to parallel EU/US disputes) and redefined the relationship from adversarial infringement to operational cooperation.
• China-Hungary Hypertension Alternative Therapy Pharmaceutical Patent Linkage:  Gao is defending a groundbreaking China-Hungary pharmaceutical patent linkage case concerning generic bisoprolol amlodipine tablets, a hypertension treatment medication. Representing an innovative drug R&D platform, Gao’s client filed for marketing authorization using a Hungarian innovator’s formulation as reference and submitted a Paragraph IV-type declaration asserting non-infringement against relevant patents on China’s Marketed Drug Patent Information Platform. Following this, the Hungarian patent holder simultaneously initiated patent confirmation litigation at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and administrative adjudication proceedings under China’s nascent patent linkage framework. With the trial phase completed and judgment pending, Gao confronts exceptional complexities in this frontier legal arena: high-stakes commercial implications involving hundreds of millions in market value, intensive scientific demands requiring pharmaceutical chemistry and patent law expertise, and novel jurisprudential challenges within China’s developing regulatory regime. Gao’s innovative strategy combines exhaustive evidence collection with comparative analysis of international precedents while navigating parallel judicial and administrative proceedings, demonstrating groundbreaking approaches to resolving patent disputes before generic market entry—crucially enhancing predictability for generics manufacturers while preventing redundant R&D investments. The case carries profound societal significance beyond billion-dollar market implications, directly impacting hypertension treatment accessibility across China. By establishing efficient preemptive resolution pathways between innovators and generic producers, Gao’s representation advances critical public health objectives: safeguarding innovation incentives through patent clarity while accelerating affordable medication access, thereby optimizing resource allocation and creating vital jurisprudence for China’s evolving patent linkage system. This landmark engagement exemplifies Gao’s unique capability to address multifaceted pharmaceutical IP disputes requiring integrated scientific-legal mastery, demonstrating how strategic patent challenges can balance intellectual property protection with essential public health imperatives.China's First Unfair Competition Case Involving API Interface Data Scraping Transactions​:  Sina Weibo filed a lawsuit against Jianyixun (a company), alleging that Jianyixun scraped, stored, and sold Weibo data through the iDataAPI interface without authorization, prevailed at the first instance in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, which ordered Jianyixun to pay 20 million RMB in compensation.The client engaged lawyer Gao  to appeal, seeking judicial clarification on data scraping boundaries. Gao's team meticulously analyzed the first-instance ruling and evidence while comprehensively surveying global data protection laws and precedents. The case presented substantial complexity with contentious factual and legal dimensions compounded by technical verification challenges: emerging data industry norms remain undefined, sparking ongoing debates about whether and how to protect data property amid mounting domestic disputes requiring urgent judicial guidelines; intertwined factual-legal disputes featured technically complex reproductions where core issues directly affected liability; and it demanded delicate balancing of consumer, public, and market interests to sustain data's economic vitality while preventing protection overreach. Gao's team pioneered the position that data holders like platforms lack absolute exclusive rights, emphasizing orderly data circulation requires case-specific legitimacy assessments of access/use to reconcile public interest with innovation incentives – an approach ultimately endorsed by the appellate court. As China's first case concerning illegal API-driven data acquisition/resale featuring the highest compensation in data disputes, it established significant precedent: providing reasoned judicial protection for data rights while preserving access space for subsequent users, advancing compliant usage frameworks, and offering a reference model for defining legitimate data scraping/trading boundaries. Widely covered by legal/media outlets including China Court Daily and China News Network, it was selected among China's Top Ten Intellectual Property Cases.

• Bachelor, Dalian University of Technology, 2022
• Master of Laws, Henan Normal University, 2017

• Member of the Competition and Antitrust Law Committee, Beijing Lawyers Association, 2024
• Member of the Expert Think Tank, Xinhua News Agency, 2024
• Member of the Legal Expert Database, Legal Daily, 2024
• Expert in Overseas Intellectual Property Protection Assistance, China (Shenzhen) Intellectual Property Protection Center, 2020
• Legal Expert of Changchun New Materials Industry Intellectual Property Alliance, 2024
• Intellectual Property Legal Expert at Shenzhen Software Industry Association, 2018
• Practical Mentor, China University of Political Science and Law, 2024

• Chinese Lawyer's Qualification, 2008