Brinks Gilson & Lione, a Chicago-based intellectual property firm, has opened its first office outside the United States in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen – the first foreign firm to do so.

The Shenzhen office, which was officially opened in December, will be managed by Brinks shareholder Harold Johnson. He is joined by associate Fei Hu, who was hired in 2016 from British semiconductor designer ARM, where he was senior legal counsel. Hu also served as an in-house lawyer at Chinese technology giants Huawei and Tencent.

Johnson and Hu will be joined on a rotating basis by Brinks president Gustavo Siller and shareholders Yuezhong Feng and Lyle Vander Schaaf.

The firm advises Chinese clients that export to the U.S. about U.S. IP laws. “We very much look forward to offering advice and guidance to Chinese-domiciled entities on the intellectual property laws of the U.S., and to helping them protect their IP,” said Siller. “We know we will serve a key role protecting the innovations of Chinese companies and defending them against assertions of infringement in the United States.”

Shenzhen, dubbed “China’s Silicon Valley”, is a booming technology hub and home to tech giants Tencent, Huawei, and ZTE – all longtime clients of Brinks.