China has become adept at spotting and hunting down foreign companies doing business in China without a required Chinese entity. What exactly constitutes doing business in China at a level requiring a Chinese corporate entity ? That is far too complicated to answer in a blog post, but suffice it to say that the Chinese
My good friend and trademark lawyer extraordinaire, Mike Atkins, recently wrote Basics of Trademark Protection in Plain English on U.S. trademarks. Below I take what Mike said, and explain how it applies to China or not. Mike’s portion is in regular font and my portion is in italics. A. Trademark Enforcement Principles The main way
Copyright takedowns in China and copyright notices. What you can and should do now to be able to use a copyright takedown to protect your copyrights in China.
Licensing your technology to a company in China Licensing your technology to another company is fraught with risks. Licensing your technology to a company in China has its own additional challenges. The first thing you should do before licensing your technology to a Chinese company is to make sure you may legally do so under
Michael Jordan just lost another China lawsuit in his ongoing effort to combat alleged trademark infringement in China. This lose highlights a point that must be familiar to even the most casual reader of this blog: Michael Jordan just lost another China lawsuit in his ongoing effort to combat alleged trademark infringement. This case, like
China joined WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) in 1980 and it introduced its first copyright law in 1990. China adopted modern intellectual property laws as a condition of joining the WTO (the World Trade Organization) in 2001. 2001 China intellectual property laws amendments The 2001 amendments were the first round of modernization of China’s
China’s recently stepped up efforts to root out unregistered foreign businesses in China has caused a rash of China consultants to retain the China lawyers at my law firm. From our work in forming China WFOEs (wholly foreign owned entities) for these consultants, we have discovered that many China consultants are falling dangerously short in
We have written a number of times about the need to register intellectual property in China with the appropriate authorities. And we usually put particular emphasis on registering trademarks in China, because doing so is an easy, obvious, and relatively economical first step in IP protection. But for those selling or manufacturing products in China,
A reader sent me a link to a report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. The report, put out by the American Assembly at Columbia University, “is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.” It is
A number of our clients manufacture products that sell for relatively high prices due in large part to distinguishing characteristics of our client’s company or product. In other words, the exact kind of product counterfeiters love to copy. Not sure why, but we have been spending more time lately in helping our clients prevent counterfeiting
