Overview
Michelle is a partner and heads JSM’s Intellectual Property and Brand Management practices. She helps multinationals and Asia based companies build, protect and unlock the value of their global IP portfolios. Her practice covers all aspects of intellectual property work such as trade mark prosecution, opposition, revocation/invalidation and cancellation actions, copyright and design registrations, intellectual property licences and assignments, franchise agreements, sponsorship agreements, non-disclosure agreements and data protection matters. Michelle is highly skilled in handling trade mark and copyright matters in China and works closely with JSM's wholly-owned IP agency in Beijing to provide practical legal solutions to clients to navigate the constantly evolving legal landscape in this challenging market. She has conducted in-depth IP audits for multinational corporations to identify gaps in protection, and advises a number of institutional clients on global and regional brand protection strategies with a particular focus on Hong Kong and Greater China.
With a chemical engineering background focused on biotechnology, Michelle is fluent in the science behind new products and platforms. She advises on the full spectrum of commercial IP matters, drafting and negotiating licences, franchising and sponsorship arrangements and managing assignments and royalty structures while guiding clients through sophisticated value creation models involving royalty streams and other IP assets. She also leads the IP workstream in corporate transactions, overseeing due diligence and ownership reviews, and structuring the licensing and cross licensing frameworks needed to complete deals seamlessly. Michelle further counsels clients on the IP and data considerations surrounding generative AI, from developing employee use policies to negotiating vendor and cloud based AI agreements. Her work spans training data and output ownership issues as well as data licensing models that enable organisations to generate new revenue streams from proprietary content and datasets.
Michelle writes and speaks frequently on regional trade mark developments and fast evolving IP issues at the intersection of brands, data and AI and is a regular media contributor and speaker at client forums.
