Steve Zhao is a partner in the Beijing office of GEN Law Firm, with 20 years of experience in complex IP litigation spanning trade marks, copyright, new plant varieties, trade secrets, data rights and other emerging forms of IP. A pioneer in AI, he acted in China’s first case holding that text-to-image output from a large AI model was not a copyrightable work. He leads the firm’s AI & IT Committee and speaks regularly on the responsible use of AI in legal practice. Steve has handled landmark cases that have shaped China’s IP jurisprudence, many selected by the Supreme People’s Court and provincial high courts as annual model cases. His wins include a RMB 100 million punitive damages award for ASSA ABLOY in the Panpan trade mark case, and RMB 20 million for Sina in China’s first data-scraping-and-resale case, named one of the Supreme People’s Court’s Top 10 IP Cases of 2023.