Software as a Service (SaaS) works great when confined to the Internet of a single country or region such as North America or the European Union. The core concept of SaaS is that an open Internet exists on which SaaS can be built and delivered. But what happens when companies attempt to deliver SaaS into
Our international IP lawyers love lists and the below is a list of the 12 things we most often recommend regarding China trademarks to our clients that do business in China and have at least one brand they care about. Most of these items apply with equal force to most other countries as well. 1.
If you want to set a probation period to test out a new China employee hire, you need to clearly say so in the new hire’s employment contract. Both the employer and the employee can use the probation period to their advantage: for example, a probationary employee can resign with only 3 days’ notice—a much
1. On the Importance of China Trademark Registrations If you are doing business in or with China you should give serious thought to registering your trademarks in China. In particular, you should consider a China trademark registration for your trade-name, your logo and your service marks. Brand identity is critical for success in China (as
In the early 1980s the US Air Force commissioned Lucian Pye, an eminent sinologist, to write a report on how Chinese negotiate with foreigners. Published in 1982, it was called Chinese Commercial Negotiating Style. Based on extensive interviews with foreigners engaged in China trade, Pye’s paper analyzes the negotiating style the Chinese use with foreign businesspeople. Pye’s
With companies falling all over themselves to move their manufacturing out of China to reduce their risks (and their tariffs), my law firm’s international manufacturing lawyers are not only hearing from many companies wanting to leave China, but from many companies in big trouble for not having properly engineered their leaving China. In The Single
When one of our international lawyers is contacted to “draft a contract” we usually must first determine whether it is time to draft the contract or not. For example, if a client wants us to draft an OEM Agreement to have its widgets manufactured by Company A, there is no point in our starting on
This post focuses on protecting against intellectual property losses arise from what we call leakage — the situation where a company has a contract preventing its foreign counter-party (usually a foreign manufacturer) from using its proprietary information, but fails to prevent that information from leaking to third parties not bound by such a contract. When
This is Part 2 in the series Mitigating China Supply Chain Risk: Should I Stay or Should I Go? by David Alexander* This part gets into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to find new suppliers. We have an American client who has approached us several times over the past 5-7 years with questions or
One of my law firm’s international manufacturing lawyers recently completed a template Tooling [Mold] Ownership Agreement for one of our clients that is having its products manufactured in factories located in multiple countries. This Tooling Ownership Agreement is essentially a template for this one client, and it has yet to be particularized for this one
