China does not like direct marketing and its direct marketing laws are so restrictive the direct marketing industry has little in common with direct marketing in the United States or even Europe. The other day, one of my law firm’s international corporate lawyers received an email from a potential client with a link to a
Hong Kong courts are world class and most companies would rather have their disputes against their Mainland China counter-parties resolved in Hong Kong instead of in Wuxi or Harbin. Hong Kong as jurisdiction of choice is alluring. But for all sorts of reasons, it’s a trap. Let me explain. In 2008, China and Hong Kong
China has adopted a plan to establish a cyberspace court in Hangzhou. The plan is for this court to accept filings electronically, try cases via livestream and hear only e-commerce and Internet related cases. Why Hangzhou? Under Chinese civil procedure law, lawsuits must be brought in the place of the defendant’s domicile. For companies, domicile
One of the joys of blogging is finding gems in unlikely places. The gem is a post entitled Jewelry and Gold Plating Problems: Can You Trust Chinese Factories? I say unlikely because neither (nor I would bet, most of our readers) have much interest in jewelry plating problems. The post is written by a Shenzhen-based
China employees have many rights they cannot contract away. China employee working hours is a good example of this. As I have written previously, most China employees can only work under China’s “standard working hours system,” and in most places in China, that means a 40-hour work week — 8 hours a day and 5
Pretty much every month, one of my law firm’s international lawyers gets an email or a phone call from someone (often a fellow lawyer) seeking assistance with making a China related document legal for some sort of use somewhere in the world. Maybe 40 percent of the time, the request relates to a need to
“work made for hire” The basis for the “work made for hire” (often shortened to “work for hire”) doctrine is clear: employers should own (some) rights to work created by their employees, whether such work is protectable by copyright, patent, or some other IP right. “invention for hire” doctrine in China But legally, it’s as
American and European companies constantly come to my law firm’s China lawyers seeking to “shore up” their China IP protections. These are mostly companies that have been doing business in or with China for months or years and have now decided they are doing well enough in China to start paying to protect what they
Indemnification is “to make compensation for incurred hurt, loss, or damage” and our clients often request indemnity to protect against a product that injures people or infringes on some third party’s intellectual property right. Seeking such indemnification makes complete sense because the last thing you want when you buy a product from overseas is to
Multi-level companies want to go into China. But as the following portion from a memorandum from one of our China compliance lawyers shows, multi-level marketing in any form is prohibited in China per the Regulations for the Prohibition of Pyramid Selling (2005). Article 7 of the Pyramid Selling regulations prohibits the following: Payment to promoters
