In my last post regarding PPE, I discussed the normalization of the Chinese N95 mask market, the increasing insanity of the Malaysian nitrile glove market, and other market forces at work, including limitations based on shipping container shortages and financing troubles. In this post I will provide some additional insights our international PPE lawyers have
Are Your International Contracts Built to Fail? With the diversification of supply chains, businesses more often must navigate countries with unpredictable legal systems. This post explains how to create strong contracts for countries with weak contract enforcement. Three Common International Contract Mistakes Over-reliance on Arbitration: Arbitration in a neutral country often does not provide the
I recently spoke with an in-house IP lawyer at a high-tech hardware client that does business all over the world, mostly in emerging market countries with weak intellectual property rights and protections, including China. When it comes to protecting their IP, this company employs what he calls a “Swiss Army Knife approach,” meaning they do
Operating overseas is always difficult. Companies that start out in a new country rarely know the culture or the laws or the rules or the people that can be the deciders between success and failure. It is of course possible to bring in good people who know all of these things, but that can be
Our international lawyers have been getting an increasing amount of work involving the provision of services across borders. International service agreements are more complicated than international product sales agreements because they typically involve an ongoing and more amorphous relationship without easily definable deliverables. It is easier to write a contract to buy 1,000 widgets from
Lately we have seen an uptick in international M&A work – some of it from China, some of it to China, some with other China alternative countries, like India and Malaysia, and some of it within the U.S. relating to U.S. subsidiaries owned by foreign companies. This increase coincides both with the world partially thawing
What you as an importer, exporter or foreign producer should do if you see an AD/CVD action heading your way.
Virtually every has intellectual property requiring protection. Let’s first get clear what we mean by “intellectual property.” IP is not patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc. These are simply tools for protecting intellectual property. So what is intellectual property? A better term might be intangible property or intangible assets. This includes everything about your business that has
Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Luis Alemañy, a Puerto Rican entrepreneur whose company, SJT Manufacturing, provides a real-life example of the opportunities present in Puerto Rico for companies looking to bring parts of their supply chains closer to North and/or Latin America. SJT is a contract manufacturer of high-precision sheet metal parts, based
On August 26, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced plea agreements with Ambiance Apparel (“Ambiance”) and its owner Sang Bum “Ed” Noh. The charges against Ambiance and Noh include a duty evasion scheme, which worked like this: Ambiance imported clothing from Asian countries and submitted fraudulent invoices to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
