Douglas Clark

Douglas Clark has lived, worked and studied in China, Korea and Japan for over 25 years. For the past 20 years he has practised a lawyer in Hong Kong and Shanghai. He is currently practising as a barrister in Hong Kong. Before that he spent 11 years in Shanghai as a partner with a large international law firm.

Doug's practices professionally as an intellectual property lawyer with a focus on patent litigation. This led him to write his first book, Patent Litigation in China which is based on his many years of experience litigating patents in China and around the world. (He is also co-author of the 4th edition of Civil Litigation in Hong Kong).

Personally, his main interests are the history of modern China and Japan, jurisprudence and economic philosophy. This led to his second book, Gunboat Justice, which tells the story of British and American courts that operated in China for one hundred years from 1842 to 1943. The story is much more than a legal history, but also shows how Japan and China reacted to their forced openings by America and Britain - Japan rising to be a great economic and military power; China collapsing into weakness and civil war. This history impacts to this day how both countries see and interact with the world today. Gunboat Justice has also been published in an abridged version entitled "Justice by Gunboat".

As a follow up to Gunboat Justice, Doug annotated, illustrated and embellished Norwood Allman's classic, Shanghai Lawyer.

Doug speaks Japanese and Mandarin Chinese as well as a smattering of Korean, having studied in Kobe, Shanghai and Seoul in his high school and university days.