I recently spoke in Beijing at a conference on legal protection of sports broadcasts, organized by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Other speakers included Chinese judges, Chinese and American lawyers and academics, sports league and broadcaster general counsel, and American and European IP officials. What
Most Americans do not understand court corruption. Otherwise they would not so frequently say there is no point in bringing a lawsuit in such and such a court because it’s corrupt. Corruption influences (sometimes greatly) court cases, but neither as often nor as much as widely believed. When dealing with court corruption, one has to
Because labor remuneration is an often-litigated issue in China, employers should be careful when reducing employee salaries and they should take that action only when prepared to defend it before an arbitrator or a judge. As with China-based employee terminations, the best way to proceed and avoid employment disputes will usually via a mutual agreement
Spring is coming to an end, but it’s not too late to conduct a little spring cleaning. First on the list: get your IP in order and register your trademarks in China. The following are 8 reasons to do so. 1. Because you are having branded goods manufactured in China, and you don’t want them
American and European companies that have their consumer products made in China regularly must contend counterfeits of their products showing up on Amazon. My law firm’s international IP lawyers frequently get inquiries from companies that sell their products on Amazon and have seen their sales plunge because they are having to compete with duplicate/counterfeit products
Making a biopic – a biographical movie about real people– is complicated. And one of the biggest concerns is liability for defamation. In an ideal world, filmmakers would get everyone depicted in the movie to sign a release. But that’s often impractical: people want too much money, too much control over how they are depicted,
China’s Regulation on Paid Annual Leave for Employees (《职工带薪年休假条例》) entitles employees who have worked continuously for one year to paid annual leave. China employees are entitled to the following statutory vacation periods, based on length of employment More than 1 and less than 10 years service: 1 week (5 days) vacation More than 10 and
Our China lawyers have written countless articles on China joint ventures (for this blog, for the Wall Street Journal, for Above the Law, and for many others), so it is good when someone we know and respect says the same basic thing about them, which is that you should watch out. The writer is my friend Randall
Employee probation in China has to be one of the most misunderstood issues in China employment law. Westerners just assume their probationary employees are at will employees who can be fired at any time, for good reason or for no reason at all. Wrong. The probation period is PART of the normal employment term and
Okay, maybe not spectacular. But definitely real. An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, How a Plague on the Movie and Music Industries Became Their Chief Protector in China sums up the change happening with China IP protection and enforcement: Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. was once a scourge of Hollywood and the U.S. music
