It has been eight years since my graduation from law school and business school. I started law school in the Fall of 2008 before the world fell apart . . . the last time. The reverberations of the financial crisis that started roiling the world in 2008 continued into 2012 when I graduated and started
How to Avoid International Business/Legal Problems. Preparation is everything and we explain how to prepare.
Hardly a week goes by at my law firm where one of our international litigation lawyers does not get a call or an e-mail from a company exploring its options for pursuing its overseas manufacturer for a bad product shipment or for no shipment at all. Each time, we patiently explain the costs and the
Last fall, in U.S. Supreme Court to Rule on Important International Arbitration Issue, I wrote about an important international arbitration matter pending before the United States Supreme Court on whether foreign companies doing business in the United States can arbitrate a dispute with an American company. The specific issue was: Whether the New York Convention
China Trademark Registrations Recently, I ran across an article Dan Harris wrote on China’s trademark laws way back in 2007, entitled China Trademark Law: Simple and Effective. As I read the article, it struck me that it could have just as well have been written, almost word for word, in 2024: Members of the media
Let me tell you about a European friend of mine in China. Well, he’s not really in China. Right now he’s in Thailand. Like many an expat, he went there for a quick holiday before the border closed and has been stuck for months because of virus travel restrictions. My friend desires anonymity. We’ll just
As a business lawyer who specializes in international transactions, I spend about half of my time working on legal strategy with my clients. I describe legal strategy as figuring out what the right way is to get from A to B, and those are often separated by international borders, vast oceans, and language and cultural
China Joint Ventures With China’s economy in a downturn and so much uncertainty regarding the future of US/China and EU/China relations, our China business lawyers have lately been seeing an uptick in companies looking to do China joint ventures “to share in the risk.” When done right, China joint ventures do share risk. But when
One of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) most persistent bugbears are separatist threats—real or imagined—on the fringes of its empire. The most recent manifestation of this concern has been the CCP’s response to the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong. On May 20, 2020, the National People’s Congress adopted a decision regarding “national security” in Hong
Whatever the Chinese Communist Party waxworks expected after the Hong Kong handover, the massive July 1, 2003 protest against proposed “national security” legislation was surely a warning about the limits of Hongkongers’ tolerance of authoritarian rule. The proposed legislation was the Hong Kong government’s response to Article 23 of its Basic Law, which requires the
