Rieko is an associate in Bird & Bird Intellectual Property Group in Beijing.

She provides tri-lingual advice on both contentious and non-contentious IP matters to predominantly Japanese clients.  Having lived in China for seventeen years, she has acquired deep insights into the handling trade mark, design, copyright, and unfair competition cases in China.   She works closely with clients on complex IP infringement and counterfeiting cases across China and cross-border cases between China and Hong Kong or Taiwan.

She started her journey in China as a language student in Beijing in 1994 and was one of the first foreign students to study Chinese Law, undertaking the undergraduate programme at People’s University in 1996.  After graduating, she worked for a leading Japanese law firm in Beijing and moved to Shanghai to establish its second branch office.  She then joined another leading law firm’s IP group in Hong Kong and relocated back to Shanghai, working there for five years.  She has also earned an LLM degree from Northwestern University in Chicago and passed the New York bar examination. 

Rieko is a native Japanese speaker and fluent in Mandarin and English.