Making a biopic – a biographical movie about real people– is complicated. And one of the biggest concerns is liability for defamation. In an ideal world, filmmakers would get everyone depicted in the movie to sign a release. But that’s often impractical: people want too much money, too much control over how they are depicted,
Our China lawyers have written countless articles on China joint ventures (for this blog, for the Wall Street Journal, for Above the Law, and for many others), so it is good when someone we know and respect says the same basic thing about them, which is that you should watch out. The writer is my friend Randall
An article from CBCNews, B.C. winery owners facing life in Chinese prison for smuggling, shows how risky it can be to get on the wrong side of China's customs service. The article is on a Canadian couple facing a long jail term in China for allegedly underreporting the value of the British Columbia wine they
A German lawyer, representing a German company owed lots of money by a Chinese citizen, wrote me last week to discuss retaining my law firm to help the company collect on its debt by seizing U.S and Canada real property held by the Chinese citizen. This lawyer was coming to me because he had liked
As a general rule, the creator of an original work (e.g., a song, movie, or video game) owns the copyright in that work. This is true in the United States and China, and in most every other country in the world. The main exception to the general rule is for “works for hire,” which are
My law firm's international licensing lawyers have been writing a slew of China technology licensing agreements lately. These deals usually come to us as China licensing deals. Sometimes they come to us as putative joint ventures, but after we explain the difficulties and costs in doing a joint venture, our clients seek to restructure their
In Netflix finally finds a way into China, CNN's Sherisse Pham explains how "six months after admitting defeat in its bid to crack China, Netflix has found a way to tap into the vast market." For years, Netflix was trying to set itself up in China. For years, Netflix was trying to set itself up
Law students and recent law school graduates are always contacting our China lawyers to ask what they should do to become international lawyers focused on China law. My advice is usually a somewhat rambling dissertation on the need to build a solid legal foundation while constantly working to improve your foreign language skills. I then
Many companies operating in China expect their China-based employees to work overtime whenever needed to "get the job done." Though imposing these sort of work hours can make sense in their home countries, this mindset is at odds with China’s laws. It gets even worse in China when the employer intends to discipline or termiante
When drafting manufacturing agreements our manufacturing lawyers used to send our clients a six-page questionnaire to tease out the client's China manufacturing plans. But no matter how hard we tried, there were almost always important questions our client either did not understand or simply could not answer. We eventually realized dumping six pages of questions
