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In the fierce competition, it is not uncommon to find that some enterprises have gone bankrupt. However, when signing a patent licensing contract (“PLC”), the relevant parties would seldom be aware of the risk related to the bankruptcy of the counter party. In fact, if the licensor has gone bankrupt, whether the licensee can continue to use the related patent? If the patent has been implemented continuously, what are the risks? The answer is uncertain. “Contract Law” has not stipulated the specific provisions on dealing with bankruptcy. However, according to “Bankruptcy Law” Article 18, the administrator shall have the right…

Due to the business need, Company A plans to relocate from the downtown to the suburbs, for which it has prepared some resettlement measures, such as the shuttle bus and etc.. However, some employees still refuse to be relocated with the company, they want to revoke the labor contract and require the financial compensation. Then how can such employers deal with the above issue? According to “Labor Contract Law” Article 40 and Article 46, which stipulate that the objective conditions taken as the basis for conclusion of the contract have greatly changed, so that the original labor contract cannot be…

Trademark Parallel Imports (“TPI”) refers to the owner of the registered trademark, or the other licensee has produced and sold the goods with the registered trademark in the export country, a third party (importer) imports the goods with the registered trademark to a third country (import country), but the owner of the registered trademark or the other licensee has also registered the same trademark in the import country. Follow up with the establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the overseas online shopping, the problems related to TPI become more and more serious. Especially for those multinational companies, TPI may…

Shortly after Mr. Q joined Company X, he suffered from melancholia. Company X was worried that Mr. Q’s illness might affect his work and other colleagues, so it terminated the labor contract with Mr. Q after he had been diagnosed. In addition, Company X paid the payment in lieu of notification and economic compensation. However, Mr. Q refused to accept Company X’s decision, and the dispute was brought to the arbitration committee and then the court, finally, the court made the judgment, which required Company X to resume the labor relation and arrange the payment for sick leave to Mr.…

In the patent infringement proceedings, the plaintiff applies for the declaration of the patent right invalid to the Patent Review Board (“PRB”) during the defense period, which is a common strategy. In the practice, when PRB has made a decision on declaring a patent right invalid, whether the court can dismiss the patentee’s claim on the decision date; or 3 months after the decision date, or upon the valid administrative order on affirming such decision, according to “Patent Law”, Article 46, paragraph 2? However, different courts, even different judges may make a different choice on dealing with such cases. Take…

The operator of a WeChat official account forwarded an article of another WeChat official account without authorization, and be deemed as infringing the other operator’s copyright, including the right of authorship, the right to modify, network dissemination of information and remuneration. Finally, the defendant operator was ordered to issue public apology and compensate RMB 1 Yuan to the plaintiff operator. People are accustomed to forward articles by WeChat, why such action shall be deemed as an infringement? Where is the boundary between the fair use and infringement? In order to keep ourselves from infringing others’ right, or protect ourselves from…

Company B filed a lawsuit against Company A on the infringement of trade secrets, and the court of the first instance ruled in the favor of B. Whereat, B released a piece of news on its website, said that A might bear a huge amount of compensation for the infringement of trade secrets, and uploaded the verdict of the first instance. Then A‘s sales dropped heavily. Shortly, in order to obtain the project of Company C, B sent the verdict to C by email, after internal discussion, C notified A on the termination of negotiation. A filed a lawsuit against…