China Distribution Contracts: Same-Same but Different Ever since COVID, our China lawyers have been seeing a big increase in foreign companies entering into distribution contracts with Chinese distributors, due mostly to the difficulties and risks foreign companies face when they go into China directly. Many of the companies that come to us to draft their
If you don’t know this yet after reading our blog, you should tattoo on your forearm that “there is no such thing as boilerplate in a China contract.” That’s really true for any contract. I don’t care how long or short, important or casual. The boilerplate (or standard terms and conditions) section of a contract
One of our China IP lawyers tends towards sarcasm, and in cleaning out my email stack I found this email: Another company that loves China so much that they have already given all their IP to a Chinese company with nothing in return. American and European companies seem not to realize that if they teach
Every so often, someone about to have their Chinese company shut down by the Chinese government contacts us. These sorts of contacts accelerate during economic slowdowns and times of tension and that has been the case of late as well. The following is a composite of some of the emails we have received relating to
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.
China is not an employment-at-will jurisdiction and terminating China employees is nearly always difficult. To make things even more challenging, many foreign companies doing business in China manage their China affairs from afar.
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
The international dispute resolution lawyers at my law firm are frequently contacted by American/European companies seeking our help in pursuing Chinese companies for providing “bad product.” We turn down a whole slew of them because of our potential client’s low likelihood of success. We typically do not want to pursue these claims because the American/European
Fake, Woeful, and “Captured” China Lawyer From non-existent “lawyers” to legitimate ones with limitations on confidentiality, navigating China’s legal landscape has become increasingly risky. Rising tensions between China and the West have fueled a surge in fake lawyer scams, with unsuspecting SMEs often drawn in by unrealistically low fees. But this bargain-basement approach often backfires
