On January 3, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced a ban on cotton products and tomato products produced in Xinjiang, based on information "that reasonably indicates the use of detainee or prison labor and situations of forced labor." This does not come as a surprise: We warned about such a ban on cotton in
1. Sorry, But Overseas Factory Problems are Likely YOUR Fault The genesis for this post is an excellent post written by Renaud Anjoran and a series of Linkedin comments on that post. The post is on Renaud's Quality Inspection Blog and it's called 28 Common Problems Chinese Suppliers Cause Importers. Renaud is the long-term owner of
U.S. companies’ relationships with their Chinese business partners have been strained in the past year, and that has only accelerated the past few months, as we have noted in prior blog posts (see The US-China Trade War: What’s Next?, When Will the US-China Trade War End? It’s the New Normal, and The US-China Trade War:
1. LaoWhy86 on YouTube Spent the last few days catching up on my China reading and viewing, mostly those articles and videos friends, clients and readers wrote me insisting I read. One of the sites I checked out -- at the recommendation of many people -- is LaoWhy86 on YouTube. I'm hooked LaoWhy86 is an
On December 23, President Biden signed a new law that bans all imports from Xinjiang. Specifically, the new law establishes a rebuttable presumption that any product from Xinjiang was made using forced labor. Some observations: 1. Not Just a Xinjiang Problem We have repeatedly pointed out in these pages that even a total ban on
As many readers of this blog already know, words in Latin script (including, of course, English words) can be registered in China as trademarks. But can you register Chinese character trademarks in the United States or the EU? This is an important question for Chinese brands, of course, but also for US and EU brands
When foreign buyers purchase products from Chinese factories the big issue is usually who owns the design of the product. This issue is often discussed in a theoretical way, based on intellectual property law principles, without getting to the real point. You are having a product made at Chinese Factory A. You decide the price
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
