I wrote the below article many years ago with Gregory Buyoff, a good friend, a brilliant international IP lawyer, and the most knowledgeable person I've ever known on Vietnam history. Intellectual Property Magazine published this article, but it no longer shows up on its website so I am running it here (with a few updates),
As we have written many times over the years, if you are selling goods into China, sourcing goods from China, or just doing business in/with China, you should probably register trademarks in China for your brand names and logos. China is a first-to-file country and it does not require evidence of prior use. This means
This post highlights four common and somewhat egregious mistakes my law firm’s China lawyers often see lawyers make when representing their clients in doing business with or in China, along with a very brief analysis of what causes each sort of mistake. 1. Not Realizing that China's Bureaucracy Puts Form Over Substance Many years ago, a U.S.
Online games in China must get approval from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) to be published and sold in China. See China Online Game Approval Laws. The NPPA review and approval process involves requiring that the game have a built-in addiction prevention mechanism. In November 2019, the NPPA released a Notice on Preventing
A few weeks ago, a client asked our law firm to handle a relatively routine domestic matter for them. We told them we do not handle such matters and we gave them a short list of excellent attorneys that do. The client expressed surprise at our unwillingness to take on their matter and remarked on
If it seems we have been writing often about China NNN Agreements, you would be right. We are doing so because we have had a troubling increase in companies coming to us after having lost their IP to their Chinese counter-party (usually their Chinese manufacturer) because the NNN Agreements they used were worthless or even
Before the Lunar New Year, Shanghai police cracked down on one of the largest subtitle groups in China, Renren Yingshi (YYeTs.com). The police arrested 14 people (not the actual translators but people who run the business). According to officials, Renren Yingshi is suspected of pirating more than 20,000 television shows and films and of earning
China Lawyer Scams and Bad China Contracts: How Foreign Companies Get Burned Foreign companies doing business in China spend plenty of time worrying about dishonest suppliers, IP theft, unpaid invoices, disappearing manufacturers, and unreliable distributors. They spend much less time worrying about the person they hired to protect them from those problems. That can be
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
As the PRC plans for the next decade of Xi Jinping rule, economic planning is at the forefront. Xi Jinping's core policy for that decade is his new concept of dual circulation 双循环. The concept is that for economic development China must rely both on domestic economic development and on China's participation in the international
