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
Our international litigation lawyers long ago developed template emails for responding to companies that write us about their China product quality problems. The below is the one we use for U.S. companies that write us with a China product quality problem and the contract provided us is not good at all. Most of the time
In the last few years, my law firm’s international dispute resolution team (of which I am a part) has seen a tremendous increase in cases involving individuals and companies and lawyers wanting to sue Chinese companies for a Chinese manufactured product that injured someone. The cases coming to our law firm typically involve one of
Every day for the last week I have gotten at least one email from a foreign company that paid money to a company in China and got literally nothing in return. The term for this is theft. This sort of thing is a given by Chinese companies and for why this is so prevalent lately
Last fall, in U.S. Supreme Court to Rule on Important International Arbitration Issue, I wrote about an important international arbitration matter pending before the United States Supreme Court on whether foreign companies doing business in the United States can arbitrate a dispute with an American company. The specific issue was: Whether the New York Convention
Way back in the pre-coronavirus days — October 30-2019 — in Do Not Let Force Majeure be a Major Force In Your China Contract, we did a post warning of force majeure provisions in contracts with Chinese companies. That post began with the following warning/joke; Pull out and look at your contract with your Chinese
Earlier this year, “Univar USA Inc. paid U.S. $62.5 Million to Resolve Allegations that it Evaded $36 Million in Antidumping Duties on Imported Chinese Saccharin.” My law firm profited handsomely from this case because we brought it to the government’s attention and then assisted on it. The United States Department of Justice describes this case
Many foreign IP owners doing business in or with China do not believe the Chinese court system works. They or their foreign lawyers therefore tend to choose foreign law and jurisdiction in their contracts. When this results in contracts that are unenforceable against a Chinese party, everyone blames the Chinese. The prophesy about the lack
Got an email the other day from a good-sized company the other day asking about the benefit of having manufacturing contracts with companies in countries like Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The email went something like this (I say “something” because I’ve changed it so nobody will ever be able to identify it): I am
— Protecting Innovation in an Innovative Way: What are China’s IP Courts? After decades of engagement between US and Chinese legal experts on reforming IP protection in mainland China, Chinese IP courts were first pioneered in 2014 in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (see the National People’s Congress (NPC) Decision of Establishing Intellectual Property Courts in
