Way back in 2006, I wrote about fake China law firms in China: Where Even The “Law Firms” Are Fake. In that post I talked about fake Chinese lawyers taking money from foreign companies for trademark registrations: There are those who take money to file trademarks in China and then simply run away. A new
Let the hate mail begin. Whenever we write on how things are getting bad for foreign companies doing business in China and on how foreign companies should think long and hard before doing business in China, we get hate mail or hate comments (which we typically delete). Many of these come from China consultants accuse
We have written a number of times about the need to register intellectual property in China with the appropriate authorities. And we usually put particular emphasis on registering trademarks in China, because doing so is an easy, obvious, and relatively economical first step in IP protection. But for those selling or manufacturing products in China,
My law firm’s international intellectual property lawyers are always helping companies that need help dealing with IP infringement in China. As a first step, we analyze the situation and propose a course of action. The following is an amalgamation of memoranda, done to convey both what goes on out there and how to deal with
My friend Kent Kedl co-wrote an article for the Moscow Times today, entitled, Why Russia Is Just as Good as China, claiming businesses should be just as interested in Russia as they are in China and that corruption in Russia is no better or worse than corruption in China: For some reason, investors find Russian corruption
A number of our clients manufacture products that sell for relatively high prices due in large part to distinguishing characteristics of our client’s company or product. In other words, the exact kind of product counterfeiters love to copy. Not sure why, but we have been spending more time lately in helping our clients prevent counterfeiting
Renaud Anjoran over at the Quality Inspection Tips blog recently wrote on How your Chinese suppliers might become your competitors. Renaud provides excellent suggestions for preventing your foreign product supplier from competing with you, based on his notes from a talk by Paul Melkebeke, Samsonite’s Vice President for Asia. Melkebeke talked of how Samsonite protects
Ever since the New York Times did an article, Wary of China, Companies Head to Cambodia, on companies leaving China for Cambodia, there has been media and play and real life discussions on how “everyone” is leaving China for places like Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam or Mexico or Indonesia or Taiwan. First, let’s look
We have long advocated for prompt China trademark registration. For companies that manufacture and export from China, registration of the English language trademark is essential. For companies that sell products and services in China, registration of the existing English language marks and the Chinese language marks for the product is essential. China now has the
China Distributor Relationships Make Sense, Especially Now My law firm’s China lawyers have written more product distribution agreements in the last three years than in the ten years prior. This is happening because foreign companies want to profit from China’s consumer and industrial markets, but they are wary of going into the country in a
