Legal Notebook

The trademark right owner A signed a trademark exclusive license contract with B. Later then, A signed another trademark exclusive license contract with C concerning the same trademark. Then who is the authorized licensee? Shall B require C to stop the infringement and compensate for damages? Or B could only require A to undertake the liability for breach of contract? To solve these problems, there are 2 factors shall be taken into consideration: (a) whether any trademark exclusive licensing contract has been submitted for record-filing? (b) whether the later licensee has good faith? Paragraph 2, Article 19 of the “Interpretation…

Zhang had a car accident on the way to work. The driver Wong paid medical expenses(“MEs”), lost wages and other relevant losses. Later then, Zhang requested the company to apply for the work-related injury. The company refused, becauset Zhang had obtained compensation from Wong. Then a dispute arose. It is not rare that a work-related injury would be concurrence with a third-party infringement. Article 30 to 45 of the “Regulation on Work-related Injury Insurance” stipulate the benefits of the work-related injury insurance. Article 16 of the “Tort Law” prescribes the compensation categories on a third-party infringement. There are many items…

Zhao was the dormant shareholder of Company A, he has made the capital contribution, and attended many shareholders’ meetings. Due to the dispute on the dividends pay-out, recently, he filed a lawsuit on the recognition of shareholder, in which he required the court to order Company A to recognize his identity as a shareholder, and go through the registration formalities. In the hearing, Company A and its 2 registered shareholders admitted Zhao was the shareholder, but refused to go through the registration formalities. They defended that the 2 shareholders refused Zhao’s request, according to the relevant law, the court should…

The 2015 ‘Amendments to the Criminal Law (the 9th edition)’, and ‘Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in Handling of Criminal Cases of Embezzlement and Bribery’ are just like ‘a tossed stone raises a thousand ripples’. Is it a symbol that the administration on the commercial bribery (‘CB’) will become more critical? However, according to the ‘2015-2016 China Anti-Commercial Bribery Research Report’, the SAIC system has investigated 4,521 CB cases in 2013, 2,986 in 2014, and 669 in the first half year of 2015. In addition, all…

With the hot competition of e-commerce, some companies use the registered trademarks of their competitors who are more famous, as the search keywords for their website. Once the user types such keywords, their website will be shown to the user via the search engine, then they can attract more clients and obtain more business opportunities. In the recent years, the trademark infringement cases related to the search keyword became more and more, such as the ‘Dazhong Banchang v. Baidu’ (the involved trademark is ‘大众搬场’), ‘Wande Information Company v. Hithink RoyalFlush Information Network Company’ (the involved trademark is ‘万得’), ‘Louvre Company…

What will be shown in your mind when ‘优盘’ was mentioned? Shenzhen Netac Company’s trademark, or a mobile storage tool? The answer is probably the latter. In fact, Shenzhen Netac Company has registered ‘优盘’as a trademark in 1999, and used it on the company’s mobile storage products. In Oct. 2002, a Beijing company applied for the revocation of this trademark with the reason that it is a generic term. The trademark bureau decided to revoke this trademark, then Beijing first medium court decided the bureau to retrial, and finally the bureau still decided to revoke it. Recent years, such dispute…

Mr. Wong paid a membership fee amount to 250,000 for a life membership of a golf course in 2011. Unexpectedly, 5 years later, the course was ordered to suspend the business due to the illegal land occupation. So Mr. Wong required the course to refund the membership fee, and the appreciation part. Finally, the court only decided the course to refund partial of the membership fee. Recent years, due to the regulations on clean up and rectify golf courses issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other authorities, many golf courses were shut down, which are followed up…

In 2008, Company B purchased products from Company A. The price was decided in a special procedure, which said as Wong the employee of Company A provided the proposal to Jiang the employee of Company B, and Jiang submitted the proposal to the manager of Company B for the final determination. In 2010, Wong and Jiang colluded in malicious, and planned that, 1) Jiang transferred the payment paid by Company B to Company C (established by Wong and his wife Chen) instead of Company A; 2) Wong reduced the price of the products of Company A, and received payments from…

Jiang was a business receptionist. He was assigned to be on duty for 6 days during the National Day and the New Year’s Day. 1 year later, Jiang dissolved the labor contract, and requested the employer to pay the economic compensation, because he insisted that the employer had failed to pay the full amount of overtime pay. Finally the court dismissed Jiang’s complaint. A series of laws and regulations, such as the ‘Labor Law’, have stipulated that an employer shall pay for the overtime work if an employee has worked during the statutory holidays. Why the court dismissed Jiang’s complaint?…

Company A and Company B signed a contract, in which it has stipulated that B would be A’s exclusive distributor by selling A’s digital products, and B should not sell the other similar products. B promoted A’s products very well, and its sales amount was increasing step by step. Company C, the competitor of A, found B’s talent, and proposed a distribution contract with high profit to B. B accepted this proposal and signed another distribution contract with C, which said that B had to sell C ’s products. Hearing of this, A’s in-house counselor proposed to request B to…