Authors：Chen Lin, Han Jinwen Summary In a recent landmark decision, the China Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) overturned its previous views of the last decade and held that branded products produced through OEM may constitute trademark infringement if a third party owns the registered trademark in China. In the previous Pretul case (2015) and Dongfeng case (2017), SPC held that OEM products do not constituted trademark infringement since the products were all exported abroad rather than…

Authors: Zhan Hao、Wan Jia Regarding the premium revenue, now China is the second biggest insurance market in this world, but regulators and insurance undertakings always feel cross due to the lack of insurance innovation, especially for the insurance product. More specifically, most of sold insurance products in China were transplanted from the foreign markets, and the so-called localization only means translation in some cases. China insurance regulator, the former CIRC and now CBIRC, occasionally criticized…

Authors: Lan Li and Jiayue Zhang China is looking to strengthen its export control mechanisms by introducing a new Export Control Law. The draft Export Control Law (“Draft Law”) was issued in 2017 for public comments.  In recent months, the “State Council’s 2019 Legislative Work Plan” has clearly included the “Export Control Law” in its 2019 legislative plan, which might be read as China’s desire to codify the new law within 2019. Highlights of the…

Authors: Ren Gulong、Zhang Jiaqi On 23 October 2019, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (“SAFE”) issued a Circular on Further Promoting Cross-border Trade and Investment Facilitation (关于进一步促进跨境贸易投资便利化的通知) (“Circular No. 28”) which introduced 12 measures to further facilitate cross-border trade and investment. Among them, there are three key reforms in respect of foreign investment, foreign debt and sale of non-performing credit assets. FOREIGN INVESTMENT All foreign-invested enterprises are permitted to make equity investments in the mainland with its capital funds.…

Author: Zhan Hao、Wan Jia Insurance subrogation is an important legal mechanism for the insurers to reduce their losses after the insurance indemnities are paid. However, there are different opinions about the application of reinsurers’ right of subrogation. Whether the subrogation can be directly exercised by the reinsurers against the liable third party? Should the reinsurance indemnities be deducted from the amount claimed by the direct insurer when it exercises subrogation against the third party? Can the…

For a few years, the topic of whether antitrust civil disputes could be arbitrable had been hotly debated in China. There were few precedents in connection with this issue for people to better understand what China’s judicial position is, and local courts presented discrepant attitudes toward this issue in the past. Nevertheless, the Supreme People’s Court of China (the “Supreme Court”) has made clear its stance in one of its recent adjudications, rendered in August…

China requires mandatory notification of mergers that meet certain thresholds. This notification duty is coupled with a standstill obligation, that is an obligation not to put a merger into effect until it is approved. Violation of the obligation to notify a merger and of the standstill obligations are commonly called gun-jumping and can subject to severe legal consequences. Business sometimes still have big incentives to partly or fully implement the merger before approval, even being…