I got an angry email yesterday in response to my having predicted a decline in manufacturing orders from China. The email accused me of “hating China” and wanting “to impede its peaceful” rise and of being “jealous of its progress.” All this because we have lately been writing how many of our law firm’s clients
In the past few months, our China lawyers have been seeing something new and troubling with China licensing agreements. Before I explain, let me step back and give a bit of history. This post is important so please stay with me. In a typical China licensing deal the foreign licensor grants the Chinese licensee the
Not surprisingly, our China lawyers are seeing a massive increase in foreign companies seeking to reduce or eliminate their China ties. Many are seeking to terminate their relationship with their Chinese suppliers and move production elsewhere (so far, it’s been mostly to Vietnam, Taiwan, Poland, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, India and Malaysia). The other day I
If I were to list the ten biggest/most common mistakes my law firm’s China lawyers see, not forming a China subsidiary when necessary and forming a China subsidiary when not unnecessary would both be on that list. We write constantly about the risks of doing business in China without a subisidiary. See Doing Business in
With the recent onslaught of tariffs, our international manufacturing lawyers are increasingly drafting manufacturing contracts for Asian countries beyond China. In the last few weeks alone, we’ve drafted manufacturing contracts for Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and India. We also have seen a noticeable uptick in our Mexico contracts as well. One of the issues our
I do mean to sound alarmist here. Almost since this blog’s inception, we have written about how if you are doing business in China you need a Chinese legal entity, be it a Wholly Foreign Owned Entity (WFOE), a Joint Venture (JV) or a Representative Office (RO). And pretty much each time, our writings on
Everything China comes in waves and China trademark “theft” is no different. When we first started this blog back in 2006, we would get a call just about every week from someone wanting to sue a Chinese company blocking the company’s product from leaving China. We hated those calls because most of the time our
China manufacturing contracts are very different from Western manufacturing contracts, for reasons which stem from differences in laws or differences in economics. This means our China manufacturing lawyers often must explain why they are doing something in China manufacturing so different from the way the client “always does it” in the West. One of the
Like so many other U.S. industries, the U.S. vaping industry is now in the crosshairs of a 25% tariff on products imported from China. The first two waves of proposed tariffs against China covered about $50 billion worth of Chinese products, but did not include vaping products. After China retaliated and proposed its own equivalent
Currently, the number one film in China is the smash hit Hello Mr. Billionaire (US$306M and counting). It’s a comedy about a hapless soccer player who stands to inherit 30 billion RMB, but only if he can spend 1 billion RMB in a month (albeit with a number of complicated conditions, like no gambling, donating
