When working on complex contract manufacturing agreements, most of our clients tell us their main goal is to protect their intellectual property. This is particularly true for designers of start-up products where much of of their IP consists of trade secrets and know-how that require a formal agreement with the manufacturer. However, as we work
Chinese manufacturers are notorious for making and sending bad products. Not surprisingly, foreign buyers of these bad products often refuse to pay their Chinese factory anything more for those products. This unpaid amount is often substantial. The foreign buyer then moves on to a new factory. This new factory is often located in the same
Smart Chinese manufacturers know that with their costs rising, they need to be able to distinguish themselves from their peers. One of the ways they are choosing to do this (even more frequently than in the past) is by copying and selling products they are making for their foreign customers. See Your China Factory as
Visit Your Overseas Factories One of the things my law firm’s international manufacturing lawyers always tell our clients is to visit their overseas factories, if at all possible. Factory Visits Show You Care Such a trip is critical for the following four reasons: Visiting your foreign factory emphasizes that you care. Why should your factory
One of the joys of blogging is finding gems in unlikely places. The gem is a post entitled Jewelry and Gold Plating Problems: Can You Trust Chinese Factories? I say unlikely because neither (nor I would bet, most of our readers) have much interest in jewelry plating problems. The post is written by a Shenzhen-based
Indemnification is “to make compensation for incurred hurt, loss, or damage” and our clients often request indemnity to protect against a product that injures people or infringes on some third party’s intellectual property right. Seeking such indemnification makes complete sense because the last thing you want when you buy a product from overseas is to
Chinese companies have recently started showing great interest in purchasing advanced equipment from foreign manufacturers. That China is now Germany’s largest trading partner is good proof of this. The Chinese businesses that have made China the factory of the world have pushed their manpower and outdated tools to the limit and for them to continue
When drafting manufacturing agreements our manufacturing lawyers used to send our clients a six-page questionnaire to tease out the client’s China manufacturing plans. But no matter how hard we tried, there were almost always important questions our client either did not understand or simply could not answer. We eventually realized dumping six pages of questions
When I was in Shenzhen last month, I had a long lunch with China manufacturing guru, Renaud Anjoran of Sofeast. During our lunch, we talked extensively about what we are seeing in China manufacturing, particularly in the electronics and Internet of Things sectors. As we always do, we shared horror stories and from those the lessons
U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently initiated an action before the U.S. Court of International Trade (“CIT”) to recover civil penalties and unpaid taxes from two companies that imported cigarette rolling papers, smoking pipes, and pipe screens from China. U.S. Customs alleged that Green Planet, Inc. and Token Group LLC, both located at the same
