by Mike Bellamy in 'China Sourcing Information Center'

I am a growing business buying and selling corporate gifts and promotional materials and have been importing from China since 2007. I’ve seen a couple of products from suppliers’ websites that I like to buy, but I realized that most of them are Trademarked/Patented products mostly found in the US or Europe. 1) If I decide to buy these products from China, how can I be sure of the same quality? 2) I saw a company that has about 5 websites and claimed they are the same. They have almost all products in the world which I’ve been trying to get for year, how can I be sure they are genuine? Considering the size of my company.

by by Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

We have been handling way more than the usual number of disputes between our clients and Chinese companies. In a number of these cases, our clients paid money to Chinese factories with whom they had been doing business for years and the Chinese factories simply refused to send over any product.

by Mike Bellamy in 'China Sourcing Information Center'

It is no secret that intellectual property protection is a problem in China. But many foreigners who are victims don’t realize that they can fight back.

by Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

From time to time I get calls from start-up companies about to embark on manufacturing in China. They are calling to ask what they need to do "to protect themselves."

by Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

I constantly get emails from people asking what my law firm charges for registering trademarks in China and I always respond by quoting our rate for a trademark analysis and stating that we will not "just" register their trademark in the category they tell us. If they want that, they need to retain someone else.

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

Danny Friedmann of IP Dragon wrote a great post entitled, "How to prevent and act upon intellectual property rights infringements in China" that very nicely (and succinctly) sets out exactly how to accomplish that.

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

Last week, co-blogger Steve Dickinson and I spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing. From our perspective, the best part of our talk were the excellent questions posed to us by the reporters in attendance. There was one question I pretty much punted on and though I have thought much about it since, I still do not have a good answer. In fact, I have determined it is not a question for a lawyer, but rather for a business. Here's the question, as best as I remember it (I believe it came from a Wall Street Journal reporter):

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

Stan Abrams over at China Hearsay just did an excellent how-to post entitled, "Pirates Beware! Gearing Up for the China IP Enforcement Lecture." The post does a great job explaining how to handle a China IP problem, though the steps it sets out would pretty much work fine for just about any legal issue needing resolution. As Stan puts it, a China IP problem is, at least from a lawyer's perspective, "just another problem to solve, and not unlike a typical foreign investment case, or a trade dispute, or a commercial transaction."

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

Santiago Cueto of the International Business Law Advisor Blog did a post, entitled, 6 Key Provisions You Should Include in Your International Licensing Agreements. I borrow extensively from that post for this one, which is more tailored towards China. I list out Santiago's tips in bold and then provide his explanation in normal font and then my comments in italics, I explain how they relate to any licensing agreement you might have with a Chinese entity. This post is formulated towards assisting a Western company looking to secure royalty payments by licensing its technology to a Chinese entity.

By Renaud Anjoran in 'Quality Inspection Blog'

Intellectual property (IP) ownership is a frequent cause of dispute between importers and Chinese suppliers.

By Renaud Anjoran in 'Quality Inspection Blog'

Most importers know that intellectual property (IP) is not respected the same way in China and in their country. But what exactly are the dangers for manufacturing in China, and what can be done about it?

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis, Founder & Senior Partner, Dezan Shira & Associates

As regular readers will know, I’m currently in the United States on tour speaking at engagements with a host of U.S. businesses, venture capitalists and the like, working with the U.S. Department of Commerce, with whom we wrote the highly successful “China Business Handbook” (downloadable for free). A lot of the events have concentrated equally on China and India, such as the “Dueling Tigers” program I’ve just spoken at in Boise. However, one of the issues that always crops up at the Q&A session is China’s IP and brand protection. It’s cropped up so often that here I’ll explain the differences between United States and China and the issues over filing in China for both English and Chinese characters.

By Steve Dickinson in 'China Law Blog'

There has been much discussion lately about China's domestic innovation/indigenous innovation policy. Foreign Affairs Magazine recently did an article on this entitled, "China's Innovation Wall, setting forth the standard Western view, which is that this policy will be terrible for America.

The standard view is wrong.

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

Though my firm represents Chinese companies in the United States, we never represent Chinese companies in China. This means that when we are retained to register trademarks in China, we almost always are registering existing names and those names are almost always in English, or at least in the Roman alphabet.

By Dan Harris in 'China Law Blog'

The World Trademark Review, in its article, "Research reveals increased US confidence in China’s rights enforcement regime," [subscription required for full article] just came out with a story on a recent US-China Business Council (USCBC) survey finding that US brand owners are becoming less concerned with IP rights enforcement in China.