The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security recently issued the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Enterprise Annuity Funds (Draft) (“the Draft”) and sought public comments on the Draft. The Draft amended the currently effective Interim Measures for the Administration of Enterprise Annuity Funds in several important respects, as highlighted below:
Continue Reading...The State Copyright Bureau recently released a new set of copyright pledges registration rules to replace its current system. The "Measures for Registration of Copyright Pledges" (the "Measures") will become effective on January 1, 2011. Copyrights, like other property rights, can be pledged as a financial security. China has not updated its current copyright pledges registration system since it went into effect on September 23, 1996. The key provisions of the Measures are highlighted below.
Continue Reading...Article 69 of the current PRC Patent Law (the “Law”) established the “Patent Exhaustion Doctrine,” providing: “None of the following shall be deemed an infringement upon a patent right: (1) using, promising to sell, selling or importing any patented product or product directly obtained through a patented process after such product is sold by the patentee or with the permission thereof; …”
Continue Reading...On November 10, 2010, China’s State Council promulgated a regulation that updates registration and related rules for resident representative offices of foreign firms (the “Regulation”), which will become effective on March 1, 2011. Foreign firms include those based in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The Regulation replaces the last set of registration rules, promulgated in 1983, to which representative offices were subject (the “Prior Regulation”). The Regulation supplemented the gaps of the Prior Regulation, but it changed a few substantive rules as well. The key updates are summarized below.
Continue Reading...Beginning December 1, 2010, foreign-invested enterprises, foreign enterprises, and foreign individuals are now required to pay the city maintenance and construction tax as well as the education surcharge, from which these entities and individuals were formerly exempt. Prior to this regulation, the PRC levied those taxes only on Chinese-owned and funded enterprises and Chinese citizens.
Continue Reading...On October 28, 2010, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress promulgated the “Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Application of Law for Foreign-related Civil Relationships” (the “Law”). It will become effective on April 1, 2011. Until now, China’s civil code had buried its choice-of-law provisions within the substantive laws, causing uncertainty and confusion. The Law established a clearer standard of what the applicable law is in foreign-related civil relationships. The most significant provisions of the Law are summarized below.
Continue Reading...In a new effort to bring clarity to regulations on the trial of cases involving Foreign Investment Enterprises (FIEs) in China, the Supreme People’s Court, the country’s highest court, implemented on August 16, 2010 Provisions on Issues Concerning Trial of Cases Relating to Foreign Investment Enterprises (I) (the “Provisions”). The Provisions deal mainly with cases involving such FIEs as contractual joint ventures, equity joint ventures and wholly foreign owned enterprises. The most important of the Provisions concern the following:
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