Publications

Before the revision of the “Trademark Law” in 2013, the well-known trademark was regarded as an honorary title, which became many enterprises’ selling point in marketing. However, the function as a selling point is not the original intention of establishing the well-known trademark system in the “Trademark Law”. Therefore, in 2013, the revision of the “Trademark Law” stipulates that well-known trademarks are expressly prohibited from advertising, which leads many enterprises to reconsider the value of well-known trademarks. Recently, the “Revised Draft of the Trademark Law (Draft for Comments)” has been released, and it involves provisions on strengthening the protection of…

In practice, some employees may delete personal information stored in computers, mobile phones and other devices provided by their employers when leaving their posts. Such deletions are understandable, because they are aimed to protect their personal information. However, some employees may delete the data or work email stored in the server, public disk, etc. without authorization due to anger or other reasons. Such behavior will undoubtedly bring different degrees of adverse effects and obstacles to the employer. If the data involves trade secrets, or any evidence which are useful in other lawsuits in the future, such deletion will bring huge direct…

On January 5, 2023, the NDRC issued the “Administrative Measures for Examination and Registration of Medium and Long-term Foreign Debts of Enterprises” (hereinafter referred to as the “Decree No.56 “), which will be implemented on February 10, 2023. The “NDRC Notice on Promoting the Reform for Filing and Registration-based System for Issuance of Foreign Debts by Enterprises” (FGWZ [2015] No. 2044, hereinafter referred to as the “Notice No.2044”) will be abolished accordingly. Here is a brief introduction of some key contents of the “Decree No.56 ” compared with the “Notice No.2044”. 1.To specify the definition of the foreign debts. The “Notice…

In commercial activities, when parties sign a contract for the supply of certain goods, they usually ignore the nature of the contact, which says a contract of work or a sales contract. However, when a dispute arises, the party who sues the counterparty shall determine the cause of the litigation, such choice of the nature of relevant contract may lead to a significant difference in the judgment. The reason is that the rights and obligations of the parties, the burden of proof, and the jurisdiction provisions (the jurisdiction for a contract of work is mainly the place of processing, and…

The 2022 Cartel World Cup is a big event for football fans. The topics about this event is everywhere, such as in the subway, the office, restaurants and etc. Among those topics, you may have heard people discussed about bet on the winner. In some companies, some colleagues even set up a WeChat group, in which they bet on different winners. However, they have not realized that despite the sports lottery tickets sold by the authorized lottery stations, the rest gambling methods are illegal, no matter individual or group betting, for serious situations, the relevant person may be prosecuted for…

When you see “Substitute for LV” and “Substitute for SK-II”, do you instinctively imagine that the quality and grade of the product may reach the same level as “LV” and “SK-II”? The public may have a positive answer to this question, so some enterprises take advantage of those famous brands by using “Substitute for XXX” as their publicity core, and directly connect their products with those famous brands in the relevant industries, by which they could attract more customers and expand their market. More seriously is that some enterprises have applied for trademark registration with the phase “Substitute for XXX”. From the perspective of commercial…

Different people have different opinions on this topic. In fact, this topic does have different answers. Let’s take a look at 2 cases firstly. Case 1: Zhan went to a hospital on December 25, 2019, and was diagnosed with discogenic low back pain and soft tissue injury. The doctor issued a sick leave of one month. On the same day, Zhan asked his colleague to send the sick leave certificate to the company, and then flew to Canada. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Zhan was unable to return as scheduled. When the company doubted his trip to Canada, he defended…

The “Pay When Paid” (hereinafter referred to as the “PWP”) clause usually applied in the chain contracts. The typical feature of PWP is that there are two contracts, a party sets the payment of the upstream party as the precondition for the payment to the downstream party. Such clause could help the party to reduce risks related to the payment, which is widely used in contracts such as construction, advertising, technical services, bulk cargo transactions and so on. However, the validity of such clause is not clearly defined in the current laws, so it is impossible to affirm such clause…

Many companies prefer to use maps to mark business scope, by which they could introduce their scale or business scope. Article 9 of the “Advertising Law” stipulates that advertisements shall not, …… (4) harm the dignity or interests of the State and divulge State secrets; ……” Since 2017, administrative penalty cases due to the improper use of maps are very common. In practice, although many companies hope to avoid such penalty, many of them do not have a comprehensive understanding of how to avoid such risk. After analyzed the previous administrative penalty cases, in order to avoid such risk, it is…

Company B sued Company A regarding a contract dispute, and won the lawsuit. A failed to perform the effective judgment, so B applied for enforcement. As W is the legal representative of A, B applied the court for adopting measures on restriction of high-level consumption on W. In 2019, A changed its legal representative from W to Z, and then W applied to the court for lifting the order of such restriction. (See (2020) Yue 01 Zhifu No. 349) It can be seen from the above case that in some cities, a legal representative adopted with such restriction could replace…