American and European companies that have their consumer products made in China regularly must contend counterfeits of their products showing up on Amazon. My law firm’s international IP lawyers frequently get inquiries from companies that sell their products on Amazon and have seen their sales plunge because they are having to compete with duplicate/counterfeit products
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,
China’s Regulation on Paid Annual Leave for Employees (《职工带薪年休假条例》) entitles employees who have worked continuously for one year to paid annual leave. China employees are entitled to the following statutory vacation periods, based on length of employment More than 1 and less than 10 years service: 1 week (5 days) vacation More than 10 and
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
Employee probation in China has to be one of the most misunderstood issues in China employment law. Westerners just assume their probationary employees are at will employees who can be fired at any time, for good reason or for no reason at all. Wrong. The probation period is PART of the normal employment term and
Okay, maybe not spectacular. But definitely real. An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, How a Plague on the Movie and Music Industries Became Their Chief Protector in China sums up the change happening with China IP protection and enforcement: Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. was once a scourge of Hollywood and the U.S. music
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
