Bird & Bird has hired a senior in-house lawyer to head up its Asian intellectual property (IP) enforcement practice. James Luo has joined the firm's Beijing office as a partner-equivalent director from Motorola, where he was senior IP counsel for north Asia.

It is Bird & Bird's second hire of an Asian IP group head this year, as the firm also brought in Ai-Leen Lim as head of Asian IP and portfolio management in Hong Kong in February. Lim joined from Singapore-based Colin Ng & Partners. Luo takes the firm's IP partner count across Beijing and Hong Kong to five, with the group comprising 17 lawyers in total.

At Motorola Luo was in charge of IP enforcement and litigation in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. His practice focuses on all types of contentious and non-contentious IP work.

He is also vice chairman of an industry-based committee focusing on anti-counterfeiting developments in China, called the Quality Brands Protection Committee (QBPC).

Bird & Bird's Asian enforcement practice previously fell under the remit of Asia IP head Matthew Laight.

Laight told Legal Week: "There are few international firms that have taken on a mainland China-qualified lawyer at such a senior level.

"It is an important step forward. James has so much experience and so many routes within China to achieve good results for our clients.

"Three years ago we set out a strategy to grow to five IP partners, one focusing on enforcement, one on portfolio management and three on IP and litigation. From here on we plan to hire at least one, possibly two, more IP litigation partners."

A number of major law firms have been strengthening their IP and competition practices in recent months in preparation for China's new anti-monopoly law, which was brought in on 1 August.