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In order to protect the shareholder’s right to know (‘SRK’), Article 33 of the ‘Company Law ‘has stipulated that a shareholder may request to examine the articles of association, the meeting minutes of the shareholders’ meeting, the resolution of the board of directors, the resolutions of the board of supervisors, the financial reports, and accounting books. However, such documents may state the information which may be deemed as trade secrets as stipulated in the ‘Anti-Unfair Competition law’, e.g. the business plan, production management, purchase and sale information. If there is no restriction on ‘SRK’, then such right might be abused…

In the “Employee Handbook”, Company A has stipulated while an employee asks for an emergency sick leave, the employee shall go through the formalities in 3 working days upon the completion of the sick leave, otherwise, the employee’s absence shall be deemed as absenteeism. Mr. Wang asked for an emergency sick leave, but he failed to go through the formalities. Six months later, Company A terminated Mr. Wang’s labor contract with the reason that his absence should be deemed as absenteeism, which had severely violated the company’s rules and regulations. Mr. Wang filed the dispute to the labor arbitration committee.…

Company A planned to engage in the production and sale of a particular device, and filed an application to the authority for qualification. During the examination period, Company B which is the competitor of Company A, brought a lawsuit on the dispute over the utility model patent infringement against Company A. In addition, Company B reported to the authority. Company B insisted that Company A was involved in an IPR infringement case, so it failed to meet the approval requirements. The strange thing was that the involved utility model patent was lack of novelty as prescribed in the patent evaluation…

Mr. Wang is the dormant shareholder of a Jiangsu company. He has made the capital contribution to the company, and received dividends for several times. Because he had doubts on the calculation of the company’s profit, he filed an application in written to the company on reviewing the accounting books. However, the company refused his request. Then Mr. Wang filed a lawsuit against the company on the violation of shareholder’s right to know. Finally, Mr. Wang won the lawsuit. The dormant shareholder of a Beijing company, Mr. Zhang has faced the same situation, and filed the same lawsuit, but he…

The “Priority Purchase Right “(“PPR”) refers to while a shareholder plans to transfer its equity, provided all conditions are equal, the other shareholders shall have PPR to purchase the equity. This is an arrangement in consideration of the nature of a limited liability company as a personal company. Article 71 of “Company Law” has stipulated that while a shareholder plans to transfer its equity, provided all conditions are equal, the other shareholders shall have PPR to purchase the equity. But for the transfer among the shareholders, Article 71 just prescribes that the shareholders may transfer all or part of their…

Lee had resigned from the Shanghai Branch of a Zhejiang company. While calculating the amount of high-temperature allowance, Lee required the company to pay the high-temperature allowance according to the standard of Shanghai (which is higher than the standard of Zhejiang) where he had worked for years. However, the company insisted that it had paid the high-temperature allowance according to the company’s rules and regulations, in which it had prescribed that the high-temperature allowance should be paid according to the standard of Zhejiang. Then Lee brought the dispute to the labor arbitration committee. Finally, the labor arbitration committee made the…

In practice, it is very common that a patentee or a trademark owner would send warning letters to competitors or distributors. However, after sending out such warning letters, if the patentee or the trademark owner fails to take further action, then the receiver would be affected by such warnings, but the receiver could not get a judicial relief by claim for unfair competition. In order to prevent the abuse of IPR by the rights holders to restrict competition by such warning, the confirmation of non-infringement of IPR (“Non-infringement”) came into being. Non-infringement refers to the party whose interest is affected…