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By: Harris Bricken

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About a year ago, American Lawyer Magazine did an article, That Law Firm’s Website Might Not Be for a Real Law Firm on “a new white paper [that] examines a growing trend of fraudsters posing as attorneys or legal consultants online to exploit those seeking legal services.”  When it comes to China and Southeast Asia, that “growing trend” has reached epidemic proportions. I say this because in the last year my law firm’s China lawyers…
Last week, the Foshan Intermediate People’s Court awarded RMB 10 million (nearly $1.5 million) in damages to the well-known British luxury goods brand Alfred Dunhill, finding Chinese copycat brand Danhuoli liable for trademark infringement and unfair competition. The press coverage (which apparently took its cue from the PR release) trumpeted the size of the award and the groundbreaking nature of the victory. To an observer unfamiliar with China trademark practice, both of these claims…
Sometimes when we write posts we except a slew of emails and comments and get none. Other times we expect none and get a ton. I had no expectations regarding the post I did earlier this year on splitting expat employee pay between the PRC and Hong Kong — China Expat Pay: Splitting with Hong Kong is 100% Illegal and 200% Dangerous but we are still getting emails on that one, mostly from people who…
Our lead China employment lawyer, Grace Yang, will be leading a 90 minute webinar on what HR departments need to know about China employment law, and boy is that a lot. Go here to sign up. It’s been about ten years since China enacted its “new” labor law and it is flat-out unbelievable how much has changed since then. I can remember how controversial it was back then when we first started writing about it.…
One of the things I love about my work is the different sort of clients we get. Some of our clients care little to not at all about the rationale behind what we as lawyers do. Other of our clients prefer an explanation for everything. The other day, one of our China lawyers cc’ed me on an email she sent to a client who wanted to know more about the contract damages provisions (a/k/a liquidated …
Nearly four years ago — during a time when our international lawyers were seeing a big increase in Vietnam work from companies looking to diversify their manufacturing from China — I wrote a series of blog posts on sourcing product from Vietnam. Since that time, our Vietnam practice has steadily grown, until about five months ago when it exploded. In light of the rapidly increasing demand for information regarding sourcing product from Vietnam and in…
I had a sorta friend in college who smoked like a chimney and drank like a Supreme Court Justice. When people would point out the danger of his ways he would respond by emphatically noting that his grandfather also smoked and drank just as much and he was still alive and kicking at 88. Does anyone not see a problem with this analysis? And yet, my firm’s international lawyers often hear something similar as…
Time for another entry in what has become a running series of posts about wine in China. Thus far, the series includes: China, Wine and Tariffs China Trademarks: Wine Labels in China China Trademarks – The (Mis)Classification of Wine I’ve written previously about the rampant counterfeiting of foreign wine in China, especially with well-known brands like Château Lafite, Château Latour, and Screaming Eagle. Because counterfeiting only comes to light when it is discovered by authorities…
china video
The pace of change is so rapid that it’s always hard to keep up with developments in China. What made sense last month often makes no sense this month. Here’s my attempt to make sense of what’s going on in video streaming right now. 1. More subscribers As recently as four or five years ago it seemed that Mainlanders simply weren’t prepared to pay for online content. Advertising-supported delivery seemed the only commercially viable form…
True confession. I have been writing too much about foreign companies looking to leave China and not enough about foreign companies looking to get into China. For the last few months, the work lives of the international lawyers at my firm have been inherently tilted towards those looking to leave China, rather than to get in. This is true for the following reasons: For every phone call or communication we get from a new client,…