Dr. Hou joined Liu, Shen & Associates in 2006 and was qualified as
patent attorney in 2007 and attorney at law in 2009, and now has many years’
experience in the field of IP law inChina. He specializes in patent
prosecution, patent re-examination, patent invalidation, software copyright
registration, IP licensing & assignment, IP due diligence, IP litigation,
and client counseling with a focus on communication, computer networks,
multimedia, electronics, and physics.
Dr. Hou has been providing
legal opinions in litigation and consultation cases since 2011. In particular,
he has presided over many cases in the fields of standard research, prior art
searching, infringement analysis, and invalidation analysis. He also led the
team in various due diligence cases such as China Telecom Investment
acquisition case and SUEZ NWS acquisition case. He is seasoned in FRAND
licensing/infringement litigation and invalidation proceedings of standard-related
patents, and quickly adapts to new areas and difficult issues, developing new
business form under the background of new technologies such as machine
learning, cloud computing, blockchain and etc. In the field of
copyright, in addition to NFT digital collectibles, he also specializes in
legal compliance issues of software project involving open source software, and
has unique insights into commercial application strategies in connection with
open source licenses such as ASL, GPL, and MPL. The clients
served by Dr. Hou include not only international industry giants such as
Samsung Electronics, Microsoft, Google, Volvo, etc., but also domestic new
start-ups such as Iluvatar CoreX and Rayz Technologies.
Dr. Hou has extensive
experience in patent infringement analysis, including evaluation of relevance
of commercial patents with respect to target products, essentiality of communication
standard essential patents to standards and technical specifications, and also validity
of patents against prior art references by searching.
Dr. Hou received a PhD
degree from theUniversityofScienceand Technology
of China (USTC) in 2003. Before joining this firm, he had worked as a
postdoctoral fellow at USTC for three years. He has had an internship at D
Young & Co LLP,UKfrom February to May in 2013.
Representative litigation cases that Dr. Hou has participated include:
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Wang Jianbo v. Microsoft, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2008.
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Shanghai Ke Dou v. Samsung, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2015.
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Shenzhen, Huawei v. Samsung, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2016-2018.
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Shenzhen, Samsung v. Huawei, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2016-2018.
- Beijing, Samsung v. Huawei,
patent infringement and patent invalidation, 2016-2018.
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Guangzhou, Samsung v. Huawei, patent infringement
and patent invalidation, 2016-2018.
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Quanzhou, Samsung v. Huawei, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2017-2018.
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Beijing, Samsung v. Shenzhen Netac, patent
invalidation, 2018.
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Beijing, Samsung v. Immersion, patent invalidation,
2018.
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Shanghai, CCDL v. Wanda Media, patent infringement
and patent invalidation, 2018.
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Suzhou, Tama v. Xinfuyuan, patent infringement and
patent invalidation, 2019-2021.
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Beijing, Samsung v. Ericsson, patent invalidation,
2020-2021.
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Beijing, BOCO Inter-Telecom v. Zhizhen Technology,
patent infringement, patent invalidation and unfair competition, 2021-2022.
Professional Presentations given by Dr. Hou include:
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“Inventiveness of Invention
in Chemical and Bio Technology Fields”, 2014.
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“On Swiss‐type Claims”,
2015.
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“Standard Essential Patent
and FRAND Principle”, 2016
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“On FRAND-Encumbered Patent
Licensing Disputes in ICT Sector”, 2018
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“FTC v Qualcomm from a
Royalty Perspective”, 2019
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“Blockchain & NFT – A
terminological introduction”, 2022
Publications that Dr. Hou has authored include:
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“The contentious monopoly”, Managing Intellectual
Property, 2016.
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“The intersection between IP and the Internet of Things”,
Managing Intellectual Property, 2019.
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“China future of IP: Cooperation is necessary for
the IoT”, Managing Intellectual Property, 2020.
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“Future of IP – China: A closer look at AI and trade
secret protection”, Managing Intellectual Property, 2021.
-
“Future of IP – China: The valuation and prosecution
of standard-related patents in the 5G era”, Managing Intellectual Property, 2021.
- “Review of open source
license agreement terms from the perspective of IP compliance”, TBP, 2022
-
“Features of Ethereum-based
NFT blockchain technology”, TBP, 2022