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China Beefs Up IP Enforcement in Six Month Parade

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Westlaw Business) Though only the world’s second-largest economy, China reportedly surged past the U.S. last year in trademark registrations, ranking first globally with 4.6 million registered trademarks in 2010. Spurned by awareness of the importance of intellectual property protection, the jump in trademark registrations reflects growing confidence in China’s judicial enforcement of intellectual property laws.

Set to close at the end of this quarter, China’s six month Intellectual Property Rights Campaign has focused on education as well as enforcement. Cracking down on pirated computer software, designer goods, pharmaceutical products and other acts of counterfeiting, the Chinese government previously announced that it had uncovered approximately 700 IP violations amounting to US$125 million since the campaign began last year.

Motivated by the prospect of boosting the economy, encouraging companies to implement trademark strategies have rung a bell with local level governments in certain Chinese cities. As incentive, authorities in Hebei province previously announced a bonus of RMB300,000 (US$45,300) would be granted to companies that had achieved the status of a well known trademark under PRC law. In 2010, well known trademarks owned by Chinese companies were far and few between, with the most recognized marks belonging to foreign household names such as Sony, Apple and Total.

Joining the IP blitz, Chongqing and cities in China’s Shandong province have also enacted training programs and tougher enforcement against counterfeiting in recent months. In particular, internet piracy and technology-related disputes have emerged as hot areas for enforcement actions.

By the way of background, PRC trademark registration is vital part of any company’s IP protection strategy, as foreign registrations are generally not recognized under PRC law. As a result, domestic and foreign companies alike are often advised to register their trademarks and intellectual property as early as possible in order to mitigate the risk of IP theft.

via China Beefs Up IP Enforcement in Six Month Parade.

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Mergers and Acquisitions in China: Current Trends and Challenges in the Middle Kingdom

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

2010 was a very strong year for mergers and acquisitions in the Middle Kingdom. Statistics provided by Thomson Reuters show that over 3000 M&A transactions involving Chinese enterprises with a combined US$131.1 billion were reported in 2010. Among these deals, cross border transactions amounted to US$80.7 billion, a 21.2% increase compared with US$63.6 billion recorded in 2009. In terms of the number of M&A deals, the materials sector saw the most activity with M&A transactions, accounting for 24% of the total, followed by the energy and power sector making up 20%. The financial sector came in third place with 17% of all the deals. These deals were driven by a number of factors including the reorganization of State-owned enterprises, acceleration of the pace of Chinese government’s “zou chu guo men or “going out policy”, and desire of foreign companies to enter into new markets by seeking acquisitions in China,

However, notwithstanding the increase in M&A activity and the growing Chinese economy, China remains a challenging environment for foreign investors. Cultural, regulatory, due diligence and legal obstacles make acquisitions in China risky and difficult. Foreign companies seeking acquisitions in China are usually aware of well-known risks such as questionable business practices, environmental exposure and the lack of intellectual property protection. Unfortunately, they are often unprepared to handle a wide range of cultural, legal and organizational differences presented in China.

Successful acquirors in China are those that commit the required resources and efforts, and use best-practice strategies to minimize the inherent risks. This article identifies the current trends in mergers and acquisitions in China, discusses the key challenges and the common mistakes that are made in connection with acquisitions in the Middle Kingdom.

via Mergers and Acquisitions in China: Current Trends and Challenges in the Middle Kingdom.

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U.S. Lawsuits Against Chinese Companies Face Multiple Hurdles

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters Legal) As more Chinese companies trade on U.S. stock exchanges, investors are increasingly suing them for securities fraud in U.S. courts — and slamming into a host of legal and bureaucratic barriers.

In theory, investors should be having an easier go of it. These Chinese entities, after all, agreed to abide by U.S. securities laws when they went public and gained access to U.S. financial markets. In practice, though, the companies have been able to hide behind a thicket of Chinese laws to avoid significant liability — in large part because evidence in these matters often resides in China, where basic litigation tasks such as gathering evidence are exceedingly difficult. Depositions by private parties are not even allowed in China, and it is nearly impossible to subpoena third-party witnesses there.

The vast majority of all civil securities-fraud suits end in settlement; but with all the impediments to pursuing claims against Chinese companies, plaintiffs’ lawyers often don’t have much leverage, and as a result, cases either drag on or plaintiffs accept relatively small settlements.

To be sure, the hurdles in these cases aren’t exclusive to China — they frequently arise in civil litigation against companies based in non-Western countries with opaque legal systems. But China has emerged as a particularly tempting target. Twelve Chinese companies were sued in 2010, accounting for more than 40 percent of all shareholder suits filed against foreign companies listed on U.S. exchanges. That compares with 14 suits against Chinese companies in the prior three years combined, according to research by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research. The lawsuits allege that the companies misled shareholders by all sorts of underhanded means, from grossly inflating revenues reported in securities filings to reporting vastly different earnings to U.S. and Chinese regulatory authorities.

It’s too soon to say how the newest spate of litigation will play out, of course, but if the earlier crop of lawsuits are any indication, shareholders could end up disappointed.

via U.S. Lawsuits Against Chinese Companies Face Multiple Hurdles.

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Directors’ Duties Dominate Hong Kong Company Law Rewrite

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Westlaw Business) Long awaited and much debated, Hong Kong’s Company Law rewrite has been completed and is set to take effect this year. Gazetted and introduced into the city’s Legislative Council last month, the new Companies Ordinance shines a tougher enforcement spotlight on directors’ duties, an area of corporate governance that has received much attention from Hong Kong lawmakers as of late. In tandem to scrutinizing company executives, the new law seeks to increase shareholder protection as well.

Aside from the new Companies Ordinance, the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing recently commenced a public consultation on corporate governance practices in the special administrative region, presumably with the intention of amending Hong Kong laws at some point. For more information on the HKEx public consultation, please see HKEx Sketches Corporate Governance Facelift.

In an effort to boost its reputation as an international financial hub, Hong Kong is tackling boardroom misconduct in public and private companies alike. Recently the Securities and Futures Commission made headlines when it hauled the chairman of a Hong Kong listed company, China Forestry, to court. Breach of fiduciary duty and other acts of misconducts are among the allegations. Reuters news sources have reported that the company itself is also being investigated for accounting irregularities. Presently the SFC has applied to freeze the chairman’s assets of up to HK$398 million (US$51 million).

Similarly, Hong Kong based Man Sing Agricultural Holdings has battled legal woes arising from alleged director misconduct for years now, with no resolution in sight. Previously Man Shing disclosed that its chief executive officer had left the company after ‘not… fulfilling his duties as a director’ by refusing to receive phone calls and neglecting Man Shing’s operations. The dispute, which involves additional allegations of corporate governance wrongdoing and claims for damages, has been entangled in legal proceedings since 2007, a costly and lengthy tussle. Another SEC filer currently litigating its own staff is Biopack Environmental Solutions. The company’s Hong Kong subsidiary commenced a suit against the director of its Hong Kong entity for wrongdoing related breach of directors’ duties.

via Directors’ Duties Dominate Hong Kong Company Law Rewrite.

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Surviving e-Discovery With the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division – Ben Kerschberg – Law & Technology – Forbes

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has aggressively requested the electronic production of corporate data over the past decade. The Antitrust Division is a perfect example, having experienced exponential growth in the amount of discovery and information that it receives in response to Second Requests. In turn, the Division’s spending on electronic storage capacity has increased in order to accommodate a six-fold increase in necessary memory between 2003 and 2010 alone.

The Antitrust Division is also a part of an internal DOJ working group that addresses e-discovery issues in civil matters. Every civil section and its respective litigation support staff participates in the group in order to uncover and implement best practices. The working group is designed not just to provide internal guidance to DOJ staff attorneys responsible for negotiating Second Requests and Civil Investigative Demands (“CIDs”), but also, according to DOJ “to provide detailed guidance to law firms and their electronic production vendors about the optimal way to produce electronic data and documents to the Division . . . to ensure that parties can avoid producing data multiple times and that the production is in a format that [can] be reviewed promptly.”

DOJ understands that e-discovery guidelines must to a great extent be industry specific given that companies in similar industries tend to use and store electronic data in similar ways.  As DOJ gains expertise related to such industry usage and establishes a pattern of addressing issues common to different investigations in the same manner over time, the lives of outside counsel inevitably will become easier. The Antitrust Division now sends an Electronic Production Letter to counsel to address a variety of electronic production issues. This Letter should serve as a baseline of issues for counsel to address early in negotiations with the Division staff. Although the Letter is a reliable benchmark, the Division will in some cases deviate from it depending on necessities raised by specific issues in any given investigation.

via Surviving e-Discovery With the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division – Ben Kerschberg – Law & Technology – Forbes.

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Viber Tops Skype with HD VoIP

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last year, Viber made a fair impact as an mobile app alternative to Skype VoIP. With a new technology partner on-board, could it now be about to go stellar?

Raised Voices Over IP

IP phone service Skype has had the field pretty much to itself in personal and SMB VoIP calls, with mobile playing a growing part of the market. While big telecommunications firms have their own VoIP brands for enterprises, the name and awareness of Skype have seen it dominate in the smaller spaces.

Now though, here comes Viber and its new partner, SPIRIT DSP, a provider of voice and video over IP engine technology — in fact, it powers a lot of the big-name enterprise services. The pair have announced today that TeamSpirit’s Voice Engine Mobile is the driving force behind a new Viber iPhone app that offers free HD Voice calls.

via Viber Tops Skype with HD VoIP.

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What’s There to Hold On To? An Enlightened Approach to Data Preservation in the Era of the Legal Hold | Law.com

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Data drives everything in today’s business world, and it would be hard to name a more important concern for today’s corporate arena than data preservation.

The growing urgency of this matter, until last year a novelty to most attorneys, touched off a flurry of rulings in the area of legal holds in 2010, with several major court decisions redrawing the map in what had been virtual terra incognita.

Beginning with the landmark Pension Committee decision by U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin in January 2010, the judiciary became hyper-focused on this area with opinion after opinion coming down for the rest of year. (Rimkus v. Cammarata, Crown Castle v. Nudd Corp, Merck Eprova v. Gnosis, Jones v. Bremen High School, and Victor Stanley II.)

Clearly corporate counsel can no longer function without developing the judgment to distinguish what must be preserved, the knowledge to negotiate and lucidly communicate the scope, and the skills and tools to select and instruct on reasonable and effective methods of preservation.

Implementing a reasonable, defensible legal hold need not be a complex or overwhelming task. The standard is not perfection, but reasonableness and good faith coupled with competency.

All too often, we see half-hearted attempts at data preservation undertaken with little understanding of an organization’s information resources. A generic hold directive dispatched en masse to custodians carries high risks. Many will ignore it as incomprehensible or dismiss it as impractical. Worse, it may trigger absurd Herculean preservation efforts crippling productivity and budgets.

via What’s There to Hold On To? An Enlightened Approach to Data Preservation in the Era of the Legal Hold.

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Scientists calculate total data stored to date: 295+ exabytes – Computerworld

February 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

Computerworld – Humankind has stored more than 295 billion gigabytes (or 295 exabytes) of data since 1986, according to a new report based on research by scientists at the University of Southern California.

The scientists also concluded that 2002 should be considered the beginning of the digital age because it was the first year digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity worldwide.

The study, published this week in the Science Express journal, stated that “if a single star is a bit of information, there’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. But it’s still less than 1% of the information stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.”

The study tracked some 60 analog and digital technologies from 1986 to 2007, calculating the amount of data stored, communicated and computed. In 2007, 2.9 X 10^20 optimally compressed bytes were stored, almost X 10^21 bytes were communicated and 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second were run on general purpose computers.

via Scientists calculate total data stored to date: 295+ exabytes – Computerworld.

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RIM Will Offer Four BlackBerry PlayBook Models, Maybe Android Applications | Tablets Planet

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In a fresh press release just published RIM has announced how many and different models they will launch their BlackBerry PlayBook 7-inch tablet with. RIM will offer the playbook in a Wi-Fi only model,  a Wi-Fi + WiMAX model (for Sprint most likely), a Wi-Fi + LTE (for Verizon most likely) and a Wi-Fi + HSPA+ (for T-Mobile & AT&T most likely).

The BlackBerry PlayBook will not only feature 4G support but also boost Bluetooth tethering, Mobile hotspots (MiFi) and BlackBerry Bridge support natively on all models.

As for some launch dates RIM states that the Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + WiMAX models will both be coming first during this present half of 2011 and the LTE and HSPA+ capable models will be launched in the second half of 2011. No firm official release dates have been vocalized by RIM yet.

via RIM Will Offer Four BlackBerry PlayBook Models, Maybe Android Applications | Tablets Planet.

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‘iPhone nano’ could swamp the mobile market; kill off rivals | ZDNet

February 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As Android remains at the top spot for the world’s most used mobile operating system, Apple are reportedly designing cheaper, smaller iPhone-like devices to compete with Google’s mobile software.

iPhones are expensive, but arguably proportionate in price for what they can do. Arguably, both the iPhone and the BlackBerry devices are ruling the marketshare at present for their ability to do practically anything.

As Apple Insider reports:

“The new smaller iPhone is expected to priced cheap enough to be offered by carriers for free with a smaller subsidy, or in the ballpark of $300 unlocked. Rather than being a dumbed down ‘feature phone,’ the smaller iPhone is said to simply be “significantly lighter,” with a smaller edge-to-edge touch screen.”

The ‘cheaper iPhone’ could be sold to carriers at half the existing price of the regular iPhone, meaning greater subsidies to the end consumer. It could in effect also be an emerging handset for those in less economically developed areas of the world.

via ‘iPhone nano’ could swamp the mobile market; kill off rivals | ZDNet.

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