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The business name is administrated by SAMR, and the registered trademark is administrated by the Trade Office. These are two different administrative procedures, so nobody could check crosswise. How to defend rights when you encounter the identical/similar business name and registered trademark? The first circumstance: a registered trademark is prior. Article 1 of the “Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Certain Issues Concerning the Application of Law to Adjudication of Civil Cases of Trademark Disputes” (FA SHI (2002) No.32) prescribes that using wording that is identical or similar to another’s registered trademark as a business name and displaying it…

Fu was late for more than 70 times within 10 months after he was onboard. The company terminated the employment contract with the reason that Fu had committed a serious breach of the company’s rules and regulations. Fu filed a lawsuit against the company. The court held that the company knew that Fu had been late for work very frequently for a long time, but it had not punished Fu in accordance with the “Employee Handbook”, which indicated that the attendance was not a factor in the evluation of employees’ performance. The court decided that the company had terminated the…

In the previous issue, we introduced how to prevent scams. However, if a company encountered a scam, it would be very difficult to claim damages from the fraudsters. Some companies have another thought, which is to claim damages from the relevant employees. Whether companies could claim damages from the relevant employees? If the answer is yes, then how much could be claimed? To choose an appropriate cause of action for civil cases is very important. Some companies claimed damages based on labor disputes. Unfortunately, Article 16 of the “Notice on Issuing the Tentative Provisions on Payment of Wages” prescribes that…

The employee of a clothing company smuggled a batch of clothing with a cost of RMB 1 million out of the company’s warehouse, and sold it to a third party at an extremely low price of RMB 200,000. Later then, the company reported to the police, and claimed that the employee should compensate a loss of RMB 1.5 million (including sales profit). How to determine the amount of occupation by taking advantage of duties? Shall the amount be equal to the cost, or sales price, or illegal gains? Because the nature of the occupation by taking advantage of duties is…

The FOCUS Company has obtained an exclusive information network transmission right of several works, which have been found to be spread by others by Baidu Pan. So The FOCUS Company sent a “Notification Letter” to the Baidu Company, and requested it to delete the relevant works. However, the Baidu Company did not delete the relevant works, and The FOCUS Company filed a lawsuit against the Baidu Company. In the litigation, the dispute focused on whether the “Notification Letter” is a valid notice. The court of the first instance held that it is a valid notice, however, the court of the…

When a financial staff received an email or a SMS from the said GM or the Purchasing Manager, and the staff was urged to remit money to a designated account. Normally, the staff would arrange the payment as soon as possible, since the staff took it as an order. Later then, the company found it was a scam, for example, the said GM’s email address was slightly different from the right one; or the fraudster had stolen the Purchasing Manager’s mobile phone number, by which the fraudster sent the fraud SMS, and so on. Such scams have two key characteristics,…

Article 17 of the “Anti-unfair Competition Law” provides that in the cases concerning the infringement of commercial secrets, where it is hard to ascertain the actual losses of the infringed party, the compensation could be determined in accordance with the gains made by the tortfeasor from the infringement (hereinafter referred to as the “GAINS”). In practice, it is very difficult to prove the actual loss of the infringed party in the majority cases concerning the infringement of commercial secrets. Therefore, it is not rare to determine the compensation in accordance with the GAINS. Regarding the calculation formula of the GAINS,…