Ray Lei Zhao

Ray Lei Zhao is a senior partner and attorney at law at Unitalen Attorneys at Law, a leading intellectual property firm headquartered in Beijing, where he heads the international trademark team. He was named Trademark Attorney of the Year in China at the Corporate INTL Global Awards 2024, recognition of more than two decades at the forefront of trademark practice in one of the world's most important markets for brand protection.

Zhao joined Unitalen in 2002 and has since built a practice devoted to the prosecution and protection of intellectual property rights, accumulating over twenty years of professional experience in the field. His work covers trademark, copyright, unfair competition, trade secret, domain name and network infringement matters, and spans both contentious and non-contentious mandates. Leading the firm's international trademark team, he is a principal point of contact for overseas rights holders seeking to secure and enforce their brands in China, guiding them through filing strategy, oppositions, invalidations and enforcement actions.

China occupies a central place in global trademark strategy, both as a manufacturing base and as a consumer market of immense scale, and the volume and complexity of trademark activity there make experienced local counsel indispensable. Rights holders must contend with a first-to-file system, the risk of bad-faith registrations and the practical challenges of enforcement across a vast territory. Advising in this environment calls for a practitioner who can combine meticulous portfolio management, securing and maintaining rights across classes and jurisdictions, with the strategic judgement needed to challenge conflicting marks and to enforce rights through administrative and judicial channels. Zhao's long specialisation equips him to do exactly that on behalf of domestic and international clients.

His reputation is reflected in sustained international recognition. Zhao has been selected to the World Trademark Review Global Leaders list for successive years and is profiled in the WTR 1000, the guide to the world's leading trademark professionals. He was also honoured as Trademark Law Expert of the Year at the Leaders in Law 2022 Global Awards. These accolades, drawn from independent research among peers and clients, place him consistently among the most highly regarded trademark practitioners in China, and reflect a career defined by continuity of specialisation rather than breadth, with brand protection at its centre throughout.

Unitalen Attorneys at Law is a comprehensive intellectual property firm with a substantial team and multilingual capability spanning Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English. Its practice extends across trademark prosecution and enforcement, patents, copyright, licensing, litigation and arbitration, and unfair-competition matters, and it maintains an active programme of professional publishing and case commentary. The firm's scale and depth allow specialists such as Zhao to combine day-to-day portfolio management with high-stakes enforcement and dispute work. Working from Beijing, his long tenure at Unitalen, leadership of its international trademark team and repeated recognition by the specialist directories underpin the 2024 Corporate INTL award and confirm his standing as one of China's foremost trademark attorneys.