I recently spoke with an in-house IP lawyer at a high-tech hardware client that does business all over the world, mostly in emerging market countries with weak intellectual property rights and protections, including China. When it comes to protecting their IP, this company employs what he calls a “Swiss Army Knife approach,” meaning they do
Operating overseas is always difficult. Companies that start out in a new country rarely know the culture or the laws or the rules or the people that can be the deciders between success and failure. It is of course possible to bring in good people who know all of these things, but that can be
We were prompted to write this post by talk that Mexico should consider joining the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership). But how many Mexican companies can really take advantage of the opportunities these sorts of trade agreements bring? How many Mexican companies are in a position to penetrate other markets? There’s nothing wrong with internationalism, but as
Our international lawyers have been getting an increasing amount of work involving the provision of services across borders. International service agreements are more complicated than international product sales agreements because they typically involve an ongoing and more amorphous relationship without easily definable deliverables. It is easier to write a contract to buy 1,000 widgets from
China and 14 other Asia-Pacific nations recently signed the world’s largest free trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). As discussed in Asia-Pacific RCEPonds to Trump’s Snub, the RCEP’s launch raises uncomfortable questions for Washington, though it is actually quite modest in terms of member commitments. That said, RCEP will usher in changes, and
Biden won the election. So what will be the China policy of the new administration? Will Biden follow the lead of Trump and Pompeo? Will Biden return to the accommodating policy of the Obama/Bush era? Or will Biden dig new ground? Biden and his team have carefully avoided tipping their hand on the direction the
Our China IP team regularly oversees requests to Chinese websites to take down counterfeit products. The success rate on getting these products removed within a week or so is North of 99%. The following email (modified very slightly) crossed my computer the other day. It is from one of our China IP lawyers who does
Lately we have seen an uptick in international M&A work – some of it from China, some of it to China, some with other China alternative countries, like India and Malaysia, and some of it within the U.S. relating to U.S. subsidiaries owned by foreign companies. This increase coincides both with the world partially thawing
1. International Dispute Resolution Clauses Every month or so, a lawyer will write me out of the blue with a “quick question” about a draft contract. One of the most common “quick questions” we get are those asking us to “confirm” that some particular court or arbitration body would make the most sense for such
What you as an importer, exporter or foreign producer should do if you see an AD/CVD action heading your way.
