Elizabeth Chien-Hale

Partner, silicon valley

Practice Experience

As a patent attorney, Elizabeth brings a combination of skills, including in-house and outside counsel, litigation and prosecution, and US and international experience to solving clients’ legal and business problems.  Her expertise lies not in intellectual property laws alone, but also her roots in the Silicon Valley and connections to the business and legal communities in the Chinese speaking regions of the world:  Taiwan/China/Hong Kong/Singapore.

Elizabeth is rooted in prosecution and opinion work in electrical-mechanical arts, having started her career in Silicon Valley firms serving clients such as 3M, Palm, Adobe and Applied Materials.  As Apple’s Senior Patent Counsel/China Coordinator, she gained a deep understanding of the handset industry and outsourced manufacturing process.  As the APAC IP Director for Eaton, she was involved deeply with IP discussions with the C919 project with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China  (COMAC).

Through her Chinese language skills, she develops her cross-border practice focused on IP issues between China and the United States.  She helps to procure patents and trademarks in China by working closely with Chinese counsel and monitoring quality issues, and she also helps clients dispute matters in China, such as patent invalidation, trademark opposition, and other IP litigation cases before the courts. Taking advantage of the unique enforcement tracks in China, she also advises on the criminal and administrative enforcement possibilities in addition to the more commonly used judicial enforcement.

Elizabeth is an adjunt faculty at the Santa Clara University School of Law (2023), and the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law (2024)

Education

LL.M., Georgetown University Law Center, 1997 (with distinction)

J.D. University of Hawaii, 1994

-Lead Articles Editor, University of Hawaii Law Review

M.A. (Computational Linguistics), University of California, Berkeley, 1989

B.S.M.E., University of California, Berkeley, 1983

Scholarship

  • Research scholar at the Peking University College of Law
  • Visiting Scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Languages

Chinese (Mandarin) and English

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