Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris Sliwoski, an international law firm where he mostly represents companies doing business in emerging market countries. Most of his time is spent helping American and European companies navigate foreign countries by working with the international lawyers at his firm in setting up companies overseas (WFOEs, Subsidiaries, Rep Offices and Joint Ventures), drafting international contracts, protecting IP, and overseeing M&A transactions.
In addition, Dan writes and speaks extensively on international law, with a focus on protecting foreign businesses in their overseas operations. He is also a prolific and widely-followed blogger, writing as the co-author of the award-winning China Law Blog.
At least once a month, one of our international litigation lawyers will get a call or an email from a U.S. lawyer seeking our help in taking a U.S. judgment (usually a default judgment) to China to enforce. The thinking of the U.S. lawyer is that all we need to do is go to a
China Hostage Situations Our China lawyers regularly get contacted regarding China hostage situations. So often in fact that they have become relatively routine. I will set the typical hostage scene by harkening back to a 2009 article, entitled, China Hostage Situation. Now IS A Good Time To Pay Your Debts [link no longer exists]. That article
China’s Ever-Worsening IP Landscape China sees the decoupling/de-risking writing on the wall, and it is redoubling its efforts to steal IP now, before the door on its ability to do so closes. China assistance to Russia in its war against Ukraine is the latest thing to accelerate the closing of that door. If (or as
Years ago, I spoke at a major technology event on how to protect IP from China. I rarely use notes when I give a speech, which and I often riff on various things. At some point during that speech, I mentioned how technology companies tended to get into more trouble when it comes to China
China has become adept at spotting and hunting down foreign companies doing business in China without a required Chinese entity. What exactly constitutes doing business in China at a level requiring a Chinese corporate entity ? That is far too complicated to answer in a blog post, but suffice it to say that the Chinese
My good friend and trademark lawyer extraordinaire, Mike Atkins, recently wrote Basics of Trademark Protection in Plain English on U.S. trademarks. Below I take what Mike said, and explain how it applies to China or not. Mike’s portion is in regular font and my portion is in italics. A. Trademark Enforcement Principles The main way
I was interviewed last year by as part of an ongoing interview series on strategy and innovation. The below is that interview [it is no longer online anywhere else]. Dan Harris is the founder of Harris Sliwoski, an international law firm with offices in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Phoenix New York, Barcelona, Madrid and Beijing.
My law firm’s basic mantra about getting money out of China is that if you consistently follow China’s laws, it ought to be no problem. This though has not been true lately. In the last week or so, our China lawyers have probably received more “money problem” calls than in the entire year before that.
The title of this post comes from a terrific NPR Marketplace article of the same name. If you are doing anything related to manufacturing in China, this is the one article you should read this year. The article is based on a question Chinese Premier Li Keqiang asked in Beijing earlier this month. Li went
When making a WFOE (Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise) or JV (Joint Venture) investment in China, an investor must consider who or what will be the shareholder(s) in the PRC entity. Will the investor invest directly, or will they create a special purpose subsidiary company (an SPV or Special Purpose Vehicle/a/k/a SPE or Special Purpose Entity)
