Dan Harris wrote an article about product safety (How to Reduce Your Foreign Manufactured Product Liability Risks) that will, hopefully, open the eyes of many people to the risks they are exposed to. I thought it particularly interesting because he went through typical questions asked of importers that resold unsafe products: To convince recalcitrant clients of the need for product liability protection for the products they are having made overseas, I sometimes send them the following … [Read more...]
New Physical Products: Patents Should Come After Market Success
We talk to a startup company developing a new physical (hardware) product at least once a week, and I'd estimate that about 25% of them try hard to secure a patent. I get it. They are afraid of being copied. They know investors and customers will like it. It looks like a wise investment. And, of course, not many lawyers will discourage a patent application, which is -- for good reason -- in their list of the best ways to protect a new product's intellectual property. However, here is … [Read more...]
Don’t Let a Chinese Supplier Circumvent You: 5 Tips
Some risks and frustrations never go away... One of them is Chinese suppliers circumventing their customers, or selling to their customer's competitors, all the while using the product knowledge they gained... from their customers. Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a good old HBR article entitled When Your Contract Manufacturer Becomes Your Competitor. It came out in 2006, but the same trends are still at work! … [Read more...]
The lack of professionalism of some Chinese suppliers
A few days ago, I was invited to speak in a seminar organized by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. The topic was "How to collect payments from Chinese suppliers". The first speaker was Javier Hernandez, a lawyer based in Beijing. From his presentation, I realized the main source risk factor is the fact that many Chinese suppliers don't follow what is considered normal business practice in the West. Here are three examples that are very, very common. Surprisingly, most … [Read more...]