With Amazon and Ebay having increased their efforts at bringing in Chinese sellers and with Chinese manufacturers branching out and making their own products, the number of companies contacting our international intellectual property lawyers about problems with counterfeit products and knockoffs has soared. If the problem involves infringing products being imported into the United States,
At least once a month, one of our international litigation lawyers will get a call or an email from a U.S. lawyer seeking our help in taking a U.S. judgment (usually a default judgment) to China to enforce. The thinking of the U.S. lawyer is that all we need to do is go to a
China Arbitration Clauses Chinese companies frequently require contract disputes be resolved through arbitration, often designating CIETAC in China as the arbitral institution. Many foreign companies are apprehensive about the fairness of arbitration in China. However, it’s important to understand Chinese arbitrators weigh both legal correctness and ethical equities when making decisions. This post discusses why
My law firm’s international intellectual property lawyers are always helping companies that need help dealing with IP infringement in China. As a first step, we analyze the situation and propose a course of action. The following is an amalgamation of memoranda, done to convey both what goes on out there and how to deal with
One of the many things that makes suing Chinese companies and individuals difficult is the requirement that service be done according to the Hague Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters, to which China is a party. Service of an entity or person in China under the Hague
In Evidence Collection and Alternatives to “Discovery” in P.R.C. Litigation, China Law Insight discusses the lack of pretrial discovery in China court cases and why American companies and lawyers tend to be so ill-prepared for this. To grossly summarize and oversimplify the article, foreign (especially American) companies need to know the following three things about
China is dangerous for foreigners whose companies might owe money to a person or company in China. A few weeks ago, a reader e-mailed one of my law firm’s international lawyers with an article regarding China’s recent jailing of California businessperson Brian Horowitz over a debt allegedly owed to a Chinese company. According to yesterday’s
If one of our clients owes money to a Chinese company and it cannot pay all its creditors, our international dispute resolution lawyers recommend they pay the Chinese company last because the Chinese company will likely never sue to recover. I am NOT advocating not paying debts to Chinese creditors, but I am saying that
My firm just seized a large sum of money from an Asian company that owed our client a large sum of money for some time. I cannot describe this case here because our international litigation team is still working on it, but it makes for a great example of a little known way to grab
You are a litigator preparing a case in the United States. Your case is now in the discovery phase and you want to depose a key witness who is located in the PRC. This witness is either unable or unwilling to come to the United States and so their deposition must be taken in China.
