Yoon & Yang

Korea

Who’s Who Legal: Competition nominee Hoil Yoon leads the elite competition practice at Yoon & Yang, which in 2015 was bolstered by the hire of former KFTC legal adviser, Kun Jong Lee. Among the firm’s 60-strong competition group, Yoon & Yang counts two former Seoul High Court judges and Young Kon Cho, the former chief prosecutor at the Seoul central district prosecutor’s office.

Much of Yoon & Yang’s competition work straddles the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property. In a case involving Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s mobile device and service business, Yoon and his team secured Korea’s first consent decree in a KFTC merger review, resolving concerns of potential abuse in the licensing of both essential and non-essential patents. The firm is also representing Qualcomm in an abuse of dominance investigation of its patent licensing practices in the mobile communications sector. General merger work continues to keep the firm busy. The team successfully represented an intervener in a KFTC merger review in the proposed merger of Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron, the country’s largest and third-largest semiconductor equipment companies, which was withdrawn in late April 2015.

Yoon & Yang is renowned as a litigation heavyweight. The firm is representing Bosch Electrical Drives in a lawsuit seeking annulment of various orders imposed by the KFTC, having successfully challenged the KFTC’s original decision and obtained a favourable judgment from Seoul High Court. The firm is representing various multinational corporations including Cathay Pacific, MAN Bus & Truck Korea and Chunghwa Picture Tubes in private damage actions following cartel decisions. The team is also advising a number of construction companies – GS E&C, Hyundai E&C, KCC E&C and KOLON Global – both in an investigation by the KFTC and in follow-on private damage actions related to alleged bid rigging in the Honam high-speed rail construction project. Other high-profile investigations the firm is instructed on include the Libor and foreign exchange cartel probes, the international capacitor cartel and the international register cartel investigations.