Session 2 Speakers
"Emerging and Fast-Growing Intellectual Property &
Technology-Related Dispute Areas in Asia"
[Session 2] Co-Moderators
Kevin Kap-You Kim
Founding Partner, Peter & Kim
Kevin Kim is a founding partner at Peter & Kim, a law firm specializing in international arbitration. With over 35 years of experience, Kevin has been involved in more than 300 international arbitration cases, acting in various capacities such as counsel, presiding arbitrator, co-arbitrator, or sole arbitrator. His areas of expertise encompass arbitration, litigation, investments and BITs, trade law and WTO, project finance, mergers and acquisitions, distribution and agency, and joint ventures and consortia.
Kevin’s educational background includes an LL.B. from Seoul National University and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. His career is marked by significant roles, including his tenure as a senior partner at Bae, Kim & Lee LLC, where he led the International Arbitration Practice and the Domestic and International Disputes Group. He has also served as Vice President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration from 2014 to 2021 and as Secretary General of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration from 2010 to 2014. Additionally, Kevin has been a member of the LCIA Court, Vice Chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee, an Advisory Board Member of the ICCA and Chair of the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board’s International Arbitration Committee.
Fluent in Korean, English, and Japanese, Kevin Kim brings a wealth of knowledge and a global perspective to his practice, making him a distinguished figure in the field of international arbitration.
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Nicolas Wiegand
Partner, CMS
Nicolas is the Co-Head of Dispute Resolution at CMS. He is based in California but also works from the CMS offices in Hong Kong and Germany.
Nicolas acts as party representative and arbitrator with a focus on licensing and IP, corporate and joint venture as well as supply and distribution disputes, in particular in the life sciences, technology, energy as well as construction and infrastructure sectors.
Having lived and worked in both civil law (Germany, Switzerland) and common law (Hong Kong, Singapore, California, New York, Australia) jurisdictions, Nicolas is experienced in handling cases under both legal traditions. Given his background, he is particularly experienced with arbitrations relating to Asia, the US and Europe.
To date, he has sat as arbitrator in close to 50 matters and has also served as an emergency arbitrator. He is on the panel of arbitrators of the world's leading arbitral institutions.
[Session 2] Speakers
John Choong
Partner, Freshfields
John Choong is a Partner at Freshfields and leads the firm’s award-winning China/Hong Kong Arbitration practice. Over the course of more than two decades, John has acted as trusted advisor to key clients on their most complex disputes in Asia, including in a number of billion-dollar matters involving Korea.
John is recognised by the legal directories as a leading practitioner and has been named International Arbitration Lawyer of the Year. He is a UK Chartered Arbitrator, and a Fellow of the leading arbitration institutes.
John’s arbitration matters have involved all the major institutional rules, and have covered a wide number of jurisdictions across Asia and beyond, and all major industries. These include widely reported disputes involving North Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia.
John has also acted on landmark billion-dollar litigations, including in matters before the UK Privy Council and the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. He has also handled high profile investigations and regulatory/compliance matters in the region.
John serves on a number of arbitration institutions as Exco, Council or committee member. He is also author or Editor of leading texts published by Oxford University Press and Sweet & Maxwell, on SIAC and Hong Kong arbitration, and serves as General Arbitration Editor of the Hong Kong White Book.
John is regularly appointed as presiding arbitrator, sole arbitrator or co-arbitrator in arbitrations under the leading rules, including under the ICC, LCIA, UNCITRAL, and HKIAC rules. He has also been an adjunct professor or lecturer at leading universities in Asia.
John speaks English and Mandarin Chinese.
Nils Eliasson
Partner, King & Spalding
Nils Eliasson is a partner in King & Spalding’s Singapore office and a member of the firm’s International Arbitration group.
Nils has represented clients in commercial and investment treaty disputes in Asia and around the world for more than 20 years. He has acted as arbitrator and counsel in more than 100 arbitrations across a wide range of industry sectors, including energy, construction, private equity and TMT. He has acted as counsel in arbitrations under the rules of all major arbitral institutions (including HKIAC, ICC, ICDR/AAA, ICSID, KCAB, LCIA, SIAC and the SCC).
Nils’ experience includes disputes related to energy (oil & gas, power (conventional as well as nuclear) and renewables), joint ventures, mergers & acquisitions, construction and license disputes. He has also handled a large number of investment treaty arbitrations under various bilateral investment treaties and the Energy Charter Treaty.
In addition to acting as counsel, Nils – who is both common law and civil law qualified - is frequently appointed as arbitrator in international proceedings.
Nils’ experience as a leading arbitration practitioner is widely recognized by independent legal directories, including Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration where he is featured as a “Global Thought Leader” and Chambers Asia-Pacific, where he is ranked in Band 1.
Nils serves as Vice-Chair of the HKIAC and is a member of the HKIAC Council.
Jinhee Kim
Partner, Jipyong
Jinhee Kim is Global Practice Chair of Jipyong LLC, one of Korea’s premier full-service firms. She also heads the firm’s Global Dispute Resolution Practice, specializing in international arbitration and cross-border litigation. She regularly appears as the lead counsel before federal and state courts of the U.S. as well as major arbitral institutions such as the ICC, LCIA, AAA, SIAC, HKIAC, and KCAB. Jinhee has also served as sole arbitrator in a number of KCAB international arbitration proceedings.
Jinhee is recognized by peers as a fierce advocate and a first-rate negotiator. She has defended numerous multi-billion-dollar multi-jurisdiction disputes and settled hundreds of cases over her legal career. She is consistently ranked by Chambers and Legal Times as a leading lawyer in international arbitration and was named Korea’s Super 30 Lawyers in 2021 by Asian Legal Business. Her recent advocacy work as first chair include: trade secret dispute and preliminary injunction before the Northern District Court of California; breach of contract action brought by an Israeli pharmaceutical company against a Korean corporation before the Supreme Court of New York; shareholder dispute involving a Korean conglomerate and a European counterpart; and several private investment disputes involving companies in Indonesia, Singapore, Korea, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the CIS countries, and the United States.
Jinhee brings a diverse cultural, organizational, and professional background to the practice of law. She trained as litigator at LeBoeuf Lamb (CA) and Paul Hastings (CA) and worked inhouse at LG Display’s Seoul Headquarters before joining Jipyong in 2016. Prior to legal practice, Ms. Kim was a TV journalist and served as an associate expert for the UN Sustainable Development Division.
Yeji Kim
Legal Counsel, Oracle
Yeji Kim is a legal counsel at Oracle Korea, based in Seoul. Before joining Oracle, she served as in-house counsel at Wemade, a leading online gaming company, where she played a key role in international arbitration cases involving intellectual property infringement, contractual breaches, and the enforcement of arbitration awards.
Her work in these high-stakes disputes, particularly in the MMORPG sector, gave her extensive experience navigating complex legal frameworks across multiple jurisdictions. In addition to her arbitration work, she handled litigation cases related to cryptocurrency delisting and blockchain-related issues. Yeji has also contributed to ICSID cases during her time at the Ministry of Justice. Her areas of expertise include IT commercial transactions and international arbitration, with a strong focus on technology and intellectual property disputes.
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Robert Wachter
Partner, Shin & Kim
Robert Wachter FCIArb is the co-head of the international arbitration practice at Shin & Kim.
Mr. Wachter began his career in the United States. After finishing first in his law school class, he clerked in the US District Court in Hawaii, and then joined O’Melveny & Myers LLP in San Francisco. He moved to South Korea in 2004 and he is now recognized as one of the leading international arbitration practitioners in Korea. He has acted in cases brought under all of the major arbitration rules, including the ICC, KCAB, VIAC, Swiss Chambers, SIAC, LCIA, SCC, JCAA and UNCITRAL rules.
Mr. Wachter has significant experience in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. In addition to his civil law experience in Korea, he also worked in Austria at Graf & Pitkowitz from 2012 to 2014. Mr. Wachter has also lectured as an adjunct professor at Seoul National University, the Supreme Court of Korea (Judicial Research and Training Institute), and Ewha Womans University.
Mr. Wachter has worked extensively in a broad range of industries including the life sciences, technology, construction, automotive, shipping, energy and telecommunications sectors. He particularly enjoys cases that require an understanding of scientific, engineering and technical issues. He regularly participates in conferences and seminars on international arbitration and is currently working on an independent commentary to the KCAB International Arbitration Rules.