Legal Notebook

The market was in a downturn, so “Shadow” (“S”) decided to cease a line. On Feb. 5, S notified its 20 hourly employees of the news that the line was ceased, and all the employees should still register at company every day. Mar. 1 was the payday, S said that the employees had only worked for 5 days in Feb., so they could only obtain 5 days’ wages. On Apr. 1, S refused to pay the wages of Mar., the employees applied to the labor dispute arbitration committee (“Committee”) for arbitration, and required S to pay the full wages of…

In the recent years, the commercial bribery (“CB”) events related to foreign invested companies happened frequently; some internationally renowned companies such as Lucent, Siemens and etc. are involved in CB events, which bring the economic loss to those companies and bad effects to their images and reputation. Hence, it is an inevitable topic for foreign invested companies to prevent CB, company should know the criteria to identify a CB event and do it right in the commercial activities. In China, we do not have a specific anti-commercial bribery law as of now except some provisions to regulate CB, the provisions…

“Shadow” (“S”) is a mid-sized company, in the past few years, with the improvement of R&D, the added value of S’s products has been increasing and S has made a sizeable profit. However, the KPI system exists in name only, the employees just complete the same tasks as the past, but they can obtain a salary increase at around 5% to 15% year by year, which becomes a convention. In the recent 2 years, the Euro crisis causes the shrinkage of foreign clients’ demand, the R&D cycle trough and failure to develop new products, the effect of RMB appreciation has…

The former employer’s customers are solicited by the employee by utilizing its Customer List ( “CL”) after he/she has made a job-hopping, which is a common occurrence. Some of those former employers have tried to sue the employees for Infringement of Business Secret by the evidence of CL, but the courts seldom support their claims. Article 10 of “Anti-Unfair Competition Law of PRC” (“AC LAW”) has stipulated that the business secret (“BS”) includes technical information and business information (“BI”). In accordance withArticle 2 of “Several Provisions on Prohibiting Infringements upon Business Secrets”, BI mainly includes, management secrets, CL, information about…

A and B know that the famous company ”Shadow” values its reputation very much, so they fabricate dozens of accounts on the BBS of a foreign trade website, “disclose” the negative news about Shadow,and blackmail Shadow into paying “Deleting Fee” through email and phone. The amount of “Deleting Fee” varies from 100Yuanto more than 10,000Yuan.At the beginning, Shadow is afraid that the negative news will bring bad effect upon its corporate image, and mislead customers, so Shadow paid the fee. However, with A and B’ s “appetitie” increasing, Shadow has no choice, but asks the attorney for help. Attorneysuggested that…