1. Chinese Manufacturers Will Copy and Sell Your Products; It’s What They Do Literally every single day this past week, the international IP lawyers at my law firm received at least one email from an American/European/Australasian company on how their Chinese manufacturer was selling their products at wholesale and/or at retail to others. These emails
If you are going to manufacture your products in Asia, you need to register your brand name and your logo as a trademark in whatever Asian country you are doing your manufacturing. And as we have been saying for years and years, there are no ifs ands or buts about this. But in addition to the
1. Selling Your Products on Chinese E-Commerce Sites With China accounting for half of the e-commerce transactions in the world, non-Chinese companies are enjoying some of the spoils. According to Alibaba, U.S. companies sold $5.4 billion in goods on its sites during the recent Singles’ Day shopathon. This success is partly due to Alibaba’s own
George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? Although the line was not about Chinese trademark law, it might as well have been. We have been beating the drum for years about registering trademarks in China (see here and here for a representative sample), but every time I start
Yesterday I attended a USPTO webinar, How the U.S. government can help companies protect and enforce their IP in China. It was informative and I highly encourage anyone interested in IP protection in China to attend future webinars. Moreover, it brought back memories of my own stint in the government helping American companies protect their
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
Our international IP lawyers love lists and the below is a list of the 12 things we most often recommend regarding China trademarks to our clients that do business in China and have at least one brand they care about. Most of these items apply with equal force to most other countries as well. 1.
1. On the Importance of China Trademark Registrations If you are doing business in or with China you should give serious thought to registering your trademarks in China. In particular, you should consider a China trademark registration for your trade-name, your logo and your service marks. Brand identity is critical for success in China (as
With companies falling all over themselves to move their manufacturing out of China to reduce their risks (and their tariffs), my law firm’s international manufacturing lawyers are not only hearing from many companies wanting to leave China, but from many companies in big trouble for not having properly engineered their leaving China. In The Single
When one of our international lawyers is contacted to “draft a contract” we usually must first determine whether it is time to draft the contract or not. For example, if a client wants us to draft an OEM Agreement to have its widgets manufactured by Company A, there is no point in our starting on
