Legal News

After the transition years, from 19th Nov. 2017, China repeal Business Tax. Despite to expand the scope of VAT, the Amendment has several aspects shall be highlighted. 1. To adjust the scope of taxpayers The “Amendment” has added entities and individuals that sell services, intangible assets, or immovables shall be deemed as taxpayers. 2. To adjust some VAT rate (1) To extend the scope for applying 17% tax rate, such as a taxpayer selling labor services, or tangible moveable property leasing service (except some specific properties and services). (2) To change the 13% tax rate into 11%. The applicable objects…

In recent years, Chinese government has gradually strengthened the management of market competition. From the perspective of the legislation，after 3 times discussion, the 2nd draft of the amendment to the “Anti-unfair Competition Law” has been approved finally; “Opinions of the State Council on Establishing a Fair Competition Review System During the Development of Market-oriented Systems” was promulgated in 2016, all these series of legislation action are the signals. From the perspective of enforcement, the punishments on many giant companies are the signals too. In order to weaken the improper intervention of the authorities, NDRC and other 5 departments have joint…

The Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and other nine national departments have jointly released the “Action Plan”, in which, 12 departments decided to conduct joint actions, seriously investigate and fight against infringements and crimes on IPR owned by foreign-invested enterprises during Sep. to Dec. 2017. This is the first action promoted by the Chinese government on protecting the IPR owned by foreign-invested enterprises in the recent years. The “Action Plan” focus on 11 key tasks, which mainly include: 1、 Crack down on crimes of trade secrets infringement. The “Action Plan” has strengthened the…

With the rapid development of enterprises, the unfair-competition behaviors related to the enterprise’s name became more and more. In view of this, SAIC released the “Rules on Prohibitive and Restrictive Use of Enterprise Names” and “Rules for Identity and Similarity Comparison for Enterprise Names” (Gong Shang Qi Zhu Zi (2017) No.133) (hereinafter, “No. 133”). To compare with “Administrative Provisions on Enterprise Name Registration” (2012 Amendment) and “Measures for Implementing the Administration of Enterprise Name Registration” (2004 promulgated) (hereinafter, the “Original Rules”), the highlights of “No.133” are as follows: 1.Prohibitive Rules (1) Forbidding the same name: An enterprise’s name shall not…

After the SAT has released the “Implementation Regulations for Special Tax Adjustments(Trail)” (“[2009] No.2”) in 2009, in order to furtherly regulate the related party transactions, and integrate with the international taxation policies, SAT has released several detailed rules. Recently, SAT releases the “[2017] No.6”, in which it has furtherly stipulated the special tax audit adjustments and mutual agreement procedures. Compared with “[2009] No.2”, “[2017] No.6” has amended and refined the following main aspects: 1. To add the risk characteristics of the enterprises which shall be paid special attention to. (1) Enterprises with the benefits received do not match with the…

With the development of information technology, it is very normal for a company to appoint another company to develop software for operation, production or promotion, such as an official website, mobile APPs, management system software and so on. However, the disputes related to software development contracts raised accordingly. The main reason of these disputes has 2 aspects. Firstly, the commissioning party is not familiar with the relevant technologies, and too many IT jargon words are involved in the contract, which make the commissioning party fails to design a specific contract; secondly, the developed achievement is intangible, which brings uncertain factors…

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission, the Supreme People’s Court, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and the China Enterprise Confederation/China Entrepreneurs Association jointly issued the “Opinions “. Although the “Opinion” shall not be directly applied as the judicial basis in hearing labor dispute cases, it reflects the tendency and trend in dealing with labor disputes in the near future. It has a guiding significance. Hereinafter partial of the contents have been selected which are highly…

The commercial cooperation between mainland China and Hong Kong becomes more frequently, and more and more disputes arise. In addition, many foreign companies tend to choose the courts in Hong Kong as the competent court, while dealing with the mainland companies. So the lawsuits’ problems involve mainland and Hong Kong is a matter of great concern. Previously, for the civil and commercial cases, there is no rules on cross-border collection of evidence, which have brought a lot of problems. To solve these problems, the “Arrangement” has been signed. The main content includes: 1. Evidence shall be collected via the respective…

To regulate the online market and protect the rights and interests of consumers, SAIC released the “Interim Measures”, which has further specified the “7-day Unconditional Return” policy as stipulated in Article 25 of the “Consumer Protection Law”. The main contents include: (1)To add 3 categories of goods which shall be excluded from the scope of the ”7-day Unconditional Return” policy Despite the 4 categories of goods which shall be excluded from the scope of the “7-day Unconditional Return” policy as stipulated in the “Consumer Protection Law”, the “Interim Measures” has added another 3 categories, which are (a) goods which –…

In order to apply a consistent judicial rule in dealing with those critical problems, which frequently raised in the trial of administrative cases involving the authorization and determination of trademark rights in the recent years, based on the “Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues concerning the Trial of Administrative Cases Involving the Authorization and Determination of Trademark Rights” (“Opinions”) released by the Supreme People’s Court in 2010, recently, the “Provisions” was released. The “Provisions” has highlighted the following aspects: (1) The determination of “Likelihood of Confusion” Article 12 of the “Provisions” has specified 4 listed factors and…