About Lilan Zhu
Ms. Lilan Zhu holds both a China patent attorney license and the China national legal professional qualification, with over eight years of global intellectual property practice. She is well versed in the invention, utility model, and industrial design systems of major filing jurisdictions including the United States, Europe, China, Japan, and South Korea, and has a systematic command of how the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the Paris Convention, and the Hague Agreement apply differently across business scenarios. Her long-standing focus has been the preparation of applications, office action responses, and post-grant maintenance for key filing regions, particularly the U.S. and Europe.
What distinguishes Ms. Zhu's practice is the way she ties IP work to a company's commercial objectives and product export timeline. She produces high-quality drafting grounded in the technical solution itself, while also designing filing routes with budget and timing in mind. One example: she proposed consolidating multiple domestic Chinese applications as priority into a single combined PCT application—a strategy now applied to more than ten filings, cutting international-phase costs by roughly 70%.
In handling application texts, she goes beyond linguistic proofreading. Working from the examination standards of the target jurisdiction, she substantively optimizes claim structure, specification support relationships, and terminology so the text satisfies local clarity and support requirements—reducing procedural risk after national-phase entry. In office action responses, she prioritizes logical completeness and claim stability, avoiding excessive concessions made for short-term allowance and establishing a clear correspondence between legal argument and technical features.
Professional Experience
- Shenzhen Chenbei Technology Co., Ltd. (Oct 2024 – Apr 2026) — Overseas Patent Engineer. Led the build-out of the company's overseas filing review and portfolio decision framework; established an internal technical terminology database and translation standard (now over 800 entries); handles technology investigation, FTO analysis, competitor research, design-around recommendations, and patent mining for new smart home appliance products; built the European and Vietnamese filing channels from the ground up; manages five U.S. firms, two European firms, and one each in Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam under a service-quality evaluation system she created.
- Beijing Unitalen Attorneys at Law (Sep 2018 – May 2024) — Foreign-Related Patent Attorney. Responsible for drafting and adapting overseas application texts and preparing office action responses at every stage, while systematically mentoring new hires—coaching four colleagues to the point of independently handling overseas filings and responses.
- Beijing Wellintech Co., Ltd. (Jul 2017 – Sep 2018) — Application Software Development Engineer. Implemented functional modules for industrial monitoring and data acquisition scenarios, carried out secondary development on a SCADA/configuration software platform, and supported on-site deployment, debugging, and issue resolution.
Representative Results
- Led drafting on 400+ applications, spanning Paris Convention route overseas filings, PCT national-phase texts, and independently drafted U.S. direct filings (including continuation-in-part, continuation, and divisional applications).
- Prepared 180+ office action responses across a range of technical fields and major filing jurisdictions, plus technical support, evidence preparation, and review of 60+ response drafts for overseas counsel.
- On the in-house side, completed 50+ U.S. utility applications, 10+ EPO applications, 10 German utility models, 2 Vietnamese applications, and 40+ sets of Hague-route design filings (designating the U.S., EU, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and others).
- Independently drafted 8 U.S. provisional applications, completed 10 FTO analyses, and led product patent package planning across the U.S., Europe, and China.
- For Sungrow Power Supply, several U.S., European, and Australian applications she prepared were allowed directly after entry-stage amendments eliminated foreseeable clarity defects—the U.S. cases issuing notices of allowance and the European search reports raising no objections. The approach secured the originally planned scope of protection while shortening examination and saving response costs, earning her the client's "Gold Medal Patent Attorney" distinction.
Technical Fields & Clients Served
Her technical coverage spans new energy, inverters, display technology, semiconductors, batteries, communications, vehicle engineering, processors, medical devices, audio/video and image processing, big data, and artificial intelligence. Filing jurisdictions include the United States, Europe, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Brazil, with U.S. and European filings accounting for over 90% of the total.
Applicants served include, among others, Sungrow Power Supply, JinkoSolar, ByteDance, OPPO, Sanhua, Inspur, GoerTek, Quectel, Tianma Microelectronics, Sony, Fujitsu, Tencent, Weichai Power, and CRRC.