Top 5 Intellectual Property Lawyers in Kuala Lumpur

The KL IP market splits into full-service litigation desks and high-volume filing boutiques. The Trade Marks Act 2019 shifted opposition work into MyIPO’s own procedural system, and the Madrid Protocol route became live in Malaysia from 27 December 2019. That changed how filings, deadlines, and disputes actually run. The five firms below are shortlisted on verifiable activity: case appearances before the High Court of Malaya, coordinated raid work with KPDN, patent drafting capacity, and registry practice before MyIPO.

1. Shearn Delamore: Full-Service IP Litigation

The IP practice at Shearn Delamore is led by senior partner Karen Abraham, whose team carries one of the broadest dockets of trademark and patent litigation in Kuala Lumpur. They run inter-partes hearings before MyIPO, Anton Piller applications in passing-off cases, and infringement suits where the plaintiff is seeking monetary damages rather than a settlement letter. Clients are typically multinational consumer brands with a Malaysian distributor who want the local proceedings handled by a firm that can also advise on the corporate side. For counterfeits, the team coordinates directly with KPDN raid officers and external enquiry agents, and they file the full paper trail required for statutory damages under the Trade Descriptions Act 2011.

2. Skrine: Enforcement and Border Protection

Skrine’s IP practice under partner Selvamalar Alagaratnam has the deepest record on customs and border enforcement in the country. They operate the detention-notice procedure under the Customs Act 1967 and file watch requests that flag suspect containers moving through Port Klang and KLIA air-cargo terminals. The team pairs its enforcement work with seizure agents on the ground and coordinates cross-border raids with associates in Singapore and Indonesia. On the non-contentious side, Skrine handles industrial design filings and geographical indication cases, a segment most KL firms avoid because of its low volume and niche exam requirements. This is the firm you engage when your actual business risk is counterfeit goods entering the country through third-party logistics.

3. Wong Jin Nee & Teo: Contentious IP

A pure boutique. Wong Jin Nee built this firm around litigation, and the practice does not chase filing volume. They take on revocation, invalidation, and infringement defence work for local manufacturing and F&B companies that have been sued by a competitor or want to attack a blocking patent. The team publishes fixed fees for opposition responses and prior-art searches, which is rare in this market, and they pull records directly from MyIPO’s searchable register when building an invalidity case. They also compile the official Malaysia chapter for the Getting the Deal Through IP series, so the firm’s analysis of Malaysian procedural rules is publicly testable before you brief them.

4. KASS International: Filing Volume and ICT Patents

KASS International is the highest-volume pure IP agency among these five, with a practice led by founding partner Kandasamy and a sub-specialty in software and ICT patent drafting for MyIPO. Their in-house docketing portal tracks renewal and annuity deadlines across client portfolios, and they handle trademarks, industrial designs, utility models, and recordals under one engagement. The engineering background of their drafting staff matters: Malaysian patent examiners are strict on claim structure, and KASS is one of the few local firms that regularly amend claims in response to substantive examination reports rather than simply pushing back. For a company filing 50 or more new applications a year, this is the most operationally efficient desk in KL.

5. Henry Goh: Patent Drafting for ASEAN

Founded in 1975, Henry Goh & Co is the oldest specialist firm in this list and fields a drafting bench of engineers and bioscience graduates. Their Kuala Lumpur patent desk handles pharmaceutical, medical device, and chemical composition claims submitted under the Patents Act 1983, where a tight first filing matters more than the litigation reputation of the firm. Henry Goh also runs ASEAN-wide coordination for clients filing through the Madrid System, consolidating agent fees in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia into one Malaysian invoice. If your asset is a composition-of-matter patent with a strict priority date, this is the team to brief at the drafting stage, not after MyIPO issues its first examination report.