Hornblowers
April 19, 2010 by Chinatex
China must have the loudest horns in the world. Now, I don’t know much about noise levels and decibals and other technical things like that, but, I do know what i hear – when I can hear. I’ve been thinking about a topic for my next blawg post for quite awhile and while I have had a couple of great ideas, I just couldn’t figure it out. You know that Old Chinatex likes to write about the law in China and other interesting stuff like that, but, if you read my blawg you also know that I like to write about China and the customs and habits which can help us all understand or tolerate the way things work over here. If you want to go to a blog site everyday and read about changes to the law in China and other intellectual stuff, I recommend you check out the award winning China Law Blog at http://www.chinalawblog.com/ which is written by Dan Harris and his associates. If you want to read interesting stories and anecdotes that should be useful and might be funny, check out my blawg at http://chntxlaw.com/blog/
So, I was thinking about horns in China and for those of you who have been here, you know that horns are not used in the same way as they are in the West. In fact, if someone beeped their horn in the same angry, prolonged, and aggressive way as they do here in China, in Los Angles, they would most certainly be shot. They don’t just give you a friendly toot to remind you that the light is now green, they lay on the mother like their life depended upon it which then starts a chain reaction of angry beepers all laying on the loudest horns on the planet.
I’m sure that when they design and build cars in China for sale on the Domestic market, whether it’s Ford, or Mercedes, or BMW, or Geely, they have a meeting to discuss horns and there is a typical Chinese automotive engineer type with the short sleeve white shirt, black pants with white socks and overly shiny black shoes that says: ”we gotta make these horns extra loud so that they Chinese will hear them.” The response inevitably is “how much louder” and the engineer says “what about 100% louder, because we are China and the Middle Kingdom and the biggest and best country in the world and we should have the loudest horns.” The decision makers obviously not wanting to lose their jobs by allowing wimpy horns or lose face to the rest of the automotive industry all agree and the horn blowing torture on Old Chinatex begins.
So I was thinking, as they create their own traffic jams by all trying to jump ahead of each other on the roads, why the Chinese don’t just wait for the light to change, or the person rudely stopped in the middle of the road talking on their cell phone to move on, or the taxi letting off it’s passengers to complete their transaction (which usually only takes about 10 seconds), or any of the million other reasons why they beep their horns, “why do they really lay on the horn”. It doesn’t seem that it works or the person whom is the brunt of the horn blowing cares, it only annoys the hell out of me. I am sitting in my office on the 12th floor of a premier office building in the Shenzhen CBD and I hear a cacophony of the loudest horns ever invented and the same goes for my apartment on the 32nd floor. Mosquitoes don’t even make it up to the 32nd floor, how the hell can the horns sound so loud and reach my ears while I am trying to sleep. I guess the simple answer is they just don’t give a hoot about anything else other than what is impacting their little world at that time and I wholeheartedly believe that this mentality is prevalent in everything they do. Now I am not talking about everyone, of course there are considerate and inconsiderate people all over the world, it just seems like with one and a half billion people that there are plenty here that just don’t give a hoot.
So just remember, when you are dealing with a factory owner or looking to invest in or acquire an existing business or conducting any other transaction and you believe that the person(s) you are dealing with “likes you” and “I can trust them” (Old Chinatex has heard it all) the way they lay on that horn.
As always, Yeeha!! Chinatex
Customs to the rescue
April 19, 2010 by Chinatex
Fake products in China are nothing new and I have been advising clients on protecting Intellectual Property matters for many years here. As I wrote in my previous blawg “Misconceptions about China” http://chntxlaw.com/2010/03/misconceptions-about-china/ “as more Chinese companies file for IP protection in China and in the West, and they have an expectation of enforcement and a rule of law, those same principles will extend to foreign companies and individuals who apply for IP protection in China.” I thought this below article was interesting and while you can never be quite sure if the numbers are accurate, I can assure you from personal experience that Chinese Customs will enforce the IP rights of those who have IP – this means Patents and Trademarks that have been filed in China. So, the best thing you can do is file often and file early as the first to file has the IP in China and then file your IP rights with Customs and establish a good relationship with Customs (you would be surprised how far a nice sincere lunch will go). So, I hope you learn something from the below article and as always, Yeeha! Chinatex.
Fake goods in mail up 7-fold
By WANG YAN (China Daily) Updated: 2010-04-20 08:24
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-04/20/content_9750480.htm
Drastic increase due to rapid development of e-business: Customs
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BEIJING — The country’s customs officials seized as many as 37,000 pieces of mails and express mails containing counterfeit items from June to December of last year, seven times the figure in the same period of 2008, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said on Monday. |
On July 20, 2009, Beijing Customs stopped a batch of outbound express mail for random inspection.
Each of the 75 boxes, with “digital accessories and parts, digital cassettes and electronic accessories” written on them, weighed 30 kg. The parcels were headed to 10 countries.
On opening the boxes, officers found more than 50,000 mobile phones, SD cards, flash drives and memory banks involving 12 brand names.
The smuggling bid opened the customs department’s eyes to the seriousness of the infringement of intellectual property rights in the country.
The case is now been transferred to the public security department for further investigation.
The drastic increase in the practice is due to the development of e-business, said Meng Yang, director of the policy and regulations department of GAC, at a press conference in Beijing.
“Intellectual property protection in export trade faces new threats as e-business develops. With online trading gaining popularity, we’re seeing more and more cases where tort goods are shipped through mail, express mail, or carried by individual passengers across the border,” Meng said.
But she said the department would not regard it as an infringement of property rights if tort goods carried by passengers were within “range of reasonable self-use”.
Zhao Fudi, spokesperson for the GAC, said mails and express mails had become a major channel in the cross-border circulation of tort goods. Zhao said the GAC launched a special campaign from July to December last year, where inspection was focused on mail and express mail.
“The number of batches of goods seized through mails and express mail in 2009 has jumped by 738 percent compared with 2008. “The number of items has increased by 28 percent, and the total value by 402 percent,” he said. China’s e-business transactions reached 530 million yuan ($77.6 million) in 2009, an annual increase of 248.7 percent, iResearch said in its report on Thursday.
It said China’s e-business market is stepping into an explosively increasing stage. “In the next two to three years, the country’s e-business customers will maintain an annual growth rate of 70 percent. Scales of real goods will reach an annual increase of up to 400 percent,” the report said.
According to the GAC data, a total of 280 million items were seized last year because of intellectual property infringement, where 99.9 percent were exporting goods and 99 percent were trademark infringement. Tobacco products, light industrial products, cosmetic and care products, hardware and mechanical products, and clothes topped the list of goods categories in terms of the number of items seized in 2009. Among the five, only tobacco products saw a decrease in number compared with last year, from 560 million in 2008 to 180 million in 2009.
