Intellectual Property and United States Customs 1. Trademarks and U.S. Customs Trademarks are defined in U.S. law as a word, name, symbol, device, color, or combination thereof used to identify and distinguish goods from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the origin and source of goods, even if said source is unknown.
China is responding to its ongoing tension with the US and EU in some surprising ways – including setting up manufacturing and distribution hubs in Mexico and increasing its involvement in Latin America. What does this have to do with your business? More than you think.
Increasing enmity between China and the West, stemming from China’s increasingly aggressive actions regarding Taiwan, China’s COVID-zero policy and a whole host of other issues facing foreign companies that do business in or with China, has caused foreign companies that do business in or with China to reassess. See Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan is
For the past several months we have been engaged in many transactions relating to China with companies still doing business in China. These companies recognize both the business opportunities and the business risks. (Those who do not fully understand the risks are still doing their business deals without the help of a lawyer on the front end, which means we usually hear from them when something has gone wrong.)
Election season is coming. This means that cannabis ballot measures, initiatives, initiated proposals, legislative proposals, etc. are moving to the fore. I won’t set out to explain the differences among the several state protocols. You’d leave. In the cannabis context, suffice it to say that “ballot measures” are somehow convoluted and dramatic all at once.
With all that has been happening, the international manufacturing lawyers at my law firm have been getting a steady stream of phone calls and emails from companies looking to leave China and many of those companies are curious about Mexico.
International hemp is big business. There are all kinds opportunities around import, export, production, processing, and sale of international hemp and hemp products. We handle these inquiries on a weekly basis, and have since 2018 when the federal government legalized the cultivation of hemp with the passage of the 2018 Agricultural Improvement Act (“2018 Farm Bill”).
I like being a cannabis business lawyer. It took a while for me to get there. I certainly didn’t think I would be doing this while I was in law school, or at the start of my career. Like a lot of things in life, it just sort of… happened. And I’ve learned a lot
Last month we weighed in on Thailand becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to decriminalize cannabis. We’ve seen some bad reporting on this since then, along the lines of “weed is legal in Thailand!” The new Thai regime is not that progressive, but we still feel that Thailand has taken a step in the
After many delays, controversies, and changes to the regulations, Los Angeles is getting closer to opening its second (and last) round of retail licensing. Based on the timeline laid out by the LA Cannabis Regulations, Retail Round Two will open either around the end of 2022 or sometime in early 2023. This round will be
