One common mistake U.S. companies make is failing to understand that patents and trademarks are territorial.* That is, these forms of intellectual property provide protection only in the country in which they were registered. If a U.S. company has not registered its patents and trademarks in China, a Chinese company is free to make use
Chinese factories are notorious for making their own-label products that bear a strong resemblance to the products they make for their foreign company manufacturing companies. And here's the thing: it is perfectly legal for your Chinese factory to copy your products unless you have a contract forbidding it. And it is also perfectly legal for them to use your brand name in China (or even to register it as their own trademark) if you have not registered your brand name as a China trademark.
Big media today has been covering Apple’s design patent dispute with “a small Chinese competitor” and I woke up this morning to emails from financial analysts and reporters clamoring to talk about this news. But first, everyone calm down and let me explain. I do not know anything specific about Apple’s case. My law firm
If you have been reading the business news on China, two things ought to have jumped out at you. One, Chinese companies are looking to buy technology innovation. And, two, Chinese companies have a very annoying habit of backing out of their deals. For news on the former, see this May 31 Wall Street Journal
China has rapidly stepped up its technology game. Its larger, better known companies (and many of its smaller and lesser known companies) are upping their technology game. To put it bluntly, their first goal is to get high end technology from American and European and Australian (mostly) companies for free. Failing that, it is to
This past week has been one of the busiest/most horrible weeks for three of the China lawyers on my law firm’s “China team.” It has been horrible because they have been working on two China technology licensing agreements, both of which this week involved a particularly hard-edged China negotiating tactic, which tactic we described in
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
Copyright takedowns in China and copyright notices. What you can and should do now to be able to use a copyright takedown to protect your copyrights in China.
