In an ever-growing and increasingly competitive climate, many of our clients are turning their attention to protecting their intellectual property on a global scale. Enter: the Patent Co-Operation Treaty Application or, PCT Application.
You should involve an international business lawyer and an international accountant or CPA as soon as you begin thinking about expanding abroad to a new market. Many lawyers and accountants would prefer to have a 20 minute conversation at your early stage to help you avoid many obvious and immediate issues rather than receive a frantic call six months later when you have run into trouble. You should get comfortable with asking these types of questions as early as possible.
Intellectual Property and United States Customs 1. Trademarks and U.S. Customs Trademarks are defined in U.S. law as a word, name, symbol, device, color, or combination thereof used to identify and distinguish goods from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the origin and source of goods, even if said source is unknown.
Foreign companies see China as increasingly risky and they are looking to move out or reduce their footprint there.
Sometimes, the answer will be yes, sometimes it will be no, and sometimes it will be something in between. For those for whom the answer is yes, the China they encounter (or continue to encounter) is one that is much changed from that of 2013. But many of the fundamentals remain the same. Keeping your nose clean is no guarantee of a smooth ride, but not keeping your nose clean is pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
If you buy products from China or have your products made in China, there is a good chance you are familiar with Sinosure. This post discusses how Sinosure has greatly changed just in the last few months in terms of how it treats foreign companies.
THE buzzword for the next 5-10 years will be "zero-China." It is mostly being used to describe companies seeking to re-jigger their supply chains to completely exclude China, but I think it will eventually come to mean any effort to be rid of China.
Selling a stripped down (off the shelf) WFOE seldom works. Sorry.
There are those who believe China's ongoing Party Congress will bode well for companies that do business in or with China. I am firmly convinced that the opposite is true and that it will used as yet another opportunity by China to show that it will not be cowered by the declining relations and sanctions/counter-sanctions between the United States / EU / Australia / Japan on the one hand, and China on the other. I see China using this Congress to let the world (domestic and external) know that it fully intends to fight back and fight back hard. In other words, this Party Congress will lead to China's decoupling from much of the world accelerating, not slowing down.
I am more convinced than ever that the CCP does NOT want to ameliorate COVID's impact on China because doing so would diminish its incredible power and control over its people. And I'm also more convinced than ever that COVID in China -- more accurately, the CCP's handling of COVID -- will negatively impact foreign companies there for a long, long time.
