Protect your molds and tooling

China Trademark Theft: It’s Baaaaaack in a Big Way

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 copyright laws

China Copyrights: Hello Mr. Billionaire and Public Domain Material

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

China law changes

China Licensing Term Sheets

China wants foreign technology and it understands it must pay for it. This is not to say China IP licensing deals are not without their own brand of major and minor pitfalls. Proposed China licensing deals that involve the foreign company One of the risky things our China licensing lawyers constantly see are proposed China

Autonomous Vehicles

Self Driving Cars in China: The Roadmap and the Risks

Developing self driving cars is the centerpiece of the Chinese government’s plan to redesign its manufacturing and technology sector. The Chinese have coined the term Intelligent and Connected Vehicles (ICV) (智能网联汽车)as their technical term for the China version of what is an international race towards a difficult technical goal. The ICV is an ideal goal

中国外商投资目录

中国商标:子类和基本号码

我们的中国商标律师经常被问及商标的尼斯分类系统和中国的商标子类系统之间的区别。它们是相关的,但有很大不同。尼斯分类系统是一种国际商品和服务分类,将所有可能的商品和服务分成45个类别:34类商品和

China product innovation

China NNN Agreements: Do Them Correctly or Walk Away.

My law firm writes more China NNN Agreements than any other contract. We have been drafting 5-15 of these a month for more than 15 years. These are basic and important agreements no matter what your industry. We write China NNN Agreements to protect against disclosure, competition, and circumvention. For more on what goes into

China tech

China Car Batteries: It’s the Technology

The standard story is that the Chinese government has decided to “corner” the world market for electric vehicles. The most expensive and important component for an electric vehicle (“EV”) is the battery pack. So the the logic goes that the first step in this plan is for Chinese companies to dominate production of EV batteries.

China design patent

China Design Patents: The Info We Need

Our China IP lawyers have lately been seeing a steady increase in China design patent filings, as Western companies increasingly come to understand the need to be proactive in protecting their IP from China. We file most design patents to protect product designs, but some are filed for defensive purposes. The defensive design patents are

International trademark litigation

How to Win a China Trademark Opposition

China does a lousy job policing bad-faith trademark registrations and that makes trademark squatting a profitable and low-risk activity in China. Those unfamiliar with Chinese trademark practice might think the problem is China’s trademark law. Not so. China’s Trademark Law has a number of provisions that could easily be invoked to combat trademark squatting, including

China automotive IP Intellectual Property

China IP Challenges for Automotive Suppliers

I did an interview the other day with GlobalAutoIndustry.com, on China IP Challenges for Automotive Suppliers, dealing mostly with automotive high-tech, which in most respects is no different from high tech generally. The below is a transcript of that interview. For anyone who has been living in a cave, the auto industry has changed, is