Why China Withdrew its Reservation to Article 11 of the UN CISG

(By Luo Yanjie) Recently, the Chinese government sent an official notice to the General Secretary of the UN to withdraw its statement made to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods (the “Convention”) that “China would not be bound by Article 11 and the relevant regulations of Article 11.” (As provided in Article 11 of the Convention, “A contract of sale need not be concluded in or evidenced by writing and is not subject to any other requirement as to form. It may be proved by any means, including witnesses.”) Presently, the withdrawal has already come into effect. Therefore, the articles in the Convention and the Contract Law of China have become more integrated. Today, we are going to share with our readers our opinions on this issue.

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An International Trade Dispute with Trademark Parallel Import Involved

By Lear Gong

The author recently handled a lawsuit involving trademark parallel import. The case itself was not complicated: a famous American bedding design company (“US Company”) holds trademark A in both China and Japan. The US Company licensed a Shanghai home furnishing company (“Shanghai Company”) to manufacture and sell products marked with trademark A within the territory of mainland China. A Japanese home furnishing company (“Japanese Company”) offered to import trademark A furniture from China to Japan, but demanded a written license from US Company. With the promise from the Shanghai Company, the parties concluded a sales contract, but the clause on the Shanghai Company’s duty to get a license from US Company was not clear. From the time the contract was concluded until the products were delivered, the Japanese Company always urged the Shanghai Company to present it the certificate of license issued by the US Company, but the Shanghai Company did not reply or present the certificate. The Japanese Company moved to terminate the sales contract based on failure to perform. The Shanghai Company then filed a lawsuit against the Japanese Company demanding that it continue performance of the sales contract.

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Analysis on the Legal Liability of Kaspersky for Customer Fraud

In recent, it has aroused public concern that the well-known security software firm, Kaspersky, was reported by CCTV, the Chinese state television, that its sales agents are likely to be fraudulent to the customers.

“Weekly Quality Report”, a program on CCTV, reports that some agents of Kaspersky trick customers to buy security software of Kaspersky by using ads which kept displaying a false virus warning. When the computer users are normally surfing the Internet, a pop-up ad appears to warn them that many serious threats such as viruses and Trojan horses are found in this computer and the computer system will be seriously damaged if the loopholes fail to be repaired in time. Because of worry about such viruses, many computer users spend RMB 20 buying the security software. In fact, such warning is just a trick to induce computer users to buy the security software. Ironically, when the customers visit the same web again after purchasing the recommended security software the virus warning still appears.

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