Associate General Counsel, Intellectual Property – China

Job Summary:

This role will serve as a strategic IP business partner supporting the PRC business units and global telecommunications and advanced optics product lines, in-country. The attorney will be embedded with engineering, product, and commercial leaders — attending technical and roadmap reviews on a recurring cadence — to identify patentable inventions, drive claim strategy that reads on competitor products, conduct FTO analyses, and surface monetization opportunities including SEP positions and assertion candidates. The role is weighted toward strategic, value-creating IP work; day-to-day drafting and prosecution is managed through outside counsel under this attorney’s direction.

The attorney also acts as a first-line legal “traffic cop” for the BU, routing non-IP issues (employment, commercial, export controls, privacy, trade secrets) to the right L&GA SMEs while retaining ownership of IP. The role serves as the primary L&GA point of contact for IP matters within the PRC, partnering with R&D, engineering, product, and commercial teams at PRC sites.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

Strategic Business Partnership & Patent Strategy:

• Serve as embedded IP business partner; attend engineering, product, roadmap, and sales reviews on a recurring cadence. Develop deep technical fluency to engage substantively.
• Drive patent claim strategy designed to read on competitor products and roadmaps; lead competitive teardowns and reverse-engineering with engineering and outside vendors.
• Conduct infringement and FTO analyses; set filing, continuation, and abandonment strategy aligned with business objectives.
• Identify monetization opportunities: SEP declarations and licensing, assertion campaigns, defensive cross-licensing, and divestiture candidates.
• Triage non-IP legal issues and route to appropriate L&GA SMEs while owning the IP workstream end-to-end.

Portfolio Management, Risk & Commercial Support:

• Direct and supervise outside counsel on U.S. and foreign drafting, filing, and prosecution; manage budgets and quality; draft personally for strategically critical inventions.
• Lead invention harvesting; coach inventors; adopt AI tools across invention identification, prior art / FTO search, drafting, and analytics.
• Support patent litigation and pre-litigation matters; lead clearance and FTO for new products and acquisition targets.
• Support IP aspects of commercial agreements (NDAs, JDAs, supply agreements, licenses, M&A diligence).

PRC-Specific Responsibilities:

• Primary L&GA point of contact for IP in the PRC: manage CNIPA filings, prosecution, and outside counsel relationships in China.
• Manage technology-localization decisions for Chinese-developed inventions (PRC-first vs. global filing); structure filings and disclosures to minimize cross-border legal and regulatory friction.
• Coordinate with trade compliance on PRC and U.S. export-control, technology-transfer, and dual-use considerations.
• Advise on patent-vs.-trade-secret decisions, employee/contractor controls, and PRC IP assignment practices; support “high-technology entity” (??????) status maintenance.
• Conduct IP training, invention harvesting workshops, and competitive landscape sessions at PRC sites; travel within the PRC as needed.

Technical Domain Focus:

• Telecommunications: optical transmission, WSS, ROADMs, and related long-haul / metro network technologies.
• Advanced optics: precision components, specialty fiber, optical coatings (telecom, defense, industrial, instrumentation).
• Semiconductor optoelectronics: EMLs, DMLs, VCSELs, photodetectors, modulators; wafer-level processes, epitaxial growth, and device packaging.
• Optical transceivers and datacom: 400G / 800G / 1.6T, co-packaged optics, linear-drive and linear pluggable optics for AI / hyperscale data centers; DSP and driver/TIA electronics where they intersect.

Education & Experience:

• Qualified to practice before CNIPA; admission as a PRC patent attorney (?????) required.
• Additional legal qualification (PRC lawyer license or another jurisdiction) is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in physics, optics, electrical engineering, or related discipline; advanced degrees strongly preferred.
• Minimum 6 years of patent experience; in-house or multinational exposure preferred.
• Direct experience with telecommunications, optical networking, advanced optics, photonic devices, lasers, or optical materials required.
• Demonstrated experience in competitive claim drafting, FTO analysis, and ideally patent monetization (SEP, licensing, or assertion) in standard-driven telecom markets.

Key Skills & Competencies:

• Operates as a true business partner — not a service provider — with strategic mindset on patents as competitive and monetization instruments.
• Advanced verbal and written fluency in Mandarin Chinese and English; able to draft and negotiate in both languages.
• Deep familiarity with PRC IP, trade secrets, employment, and technology-export regulatory environment; pragmatic handling of cross-border IP and tech-transfer.
• Strong outside-counsel and project management across geographies; able to operate independently as on-the-ground L&GA presence in the PRC while staying tightly connected to the global IP function.