For many foreign SMEs that produce consumer goods e-commerce is the best way in to the Chinese market, offering a B2C channel that is relatively cheap and easy to setup and maintain. Naturally, trading on the web comes with risks, but just a few key steps are necessary to ensure a basic safe strategy. In this ‘SME in the Spotlight’ post an anti-pollution mask producer shares their experiences of doing business in China….
A new patent office partnership between the UK and China may make life easier for UK SMEs wishing to transfer their innovations to China.
On July 1 2014 the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) launched a new pilot Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme to allow those who have been granted a patent at one office to request fast-track processing of an equivalent application at the other.
Continue reading “Patent applications in China streamlined for UK businesses” »
With a number of years of operating the China IPR SME Helpdesk under our belt, we’ve seen many changes to the types of enquiries we receive, as sectoral trends shift and businesses adjust to a changing IPR environment.
However, certain enquiry and case profiles persist – it seems that many businesses still hold the view that they face lower risks in China, and accordingly pay less attention to IP, only to realise their shortfalls too little, too late.
Here we look at some common misconceptions from those that think the risks are negligible….
Continue reading “We don’t need an IPR strategy for China….” »
Intellectual property rights (IPR) infringements against consumer goods in China come mainly in the form of counterfeits. However, infringement is sometimes not so clear cut. Infringers may target the packaging and visual presentation, rather than the actual contents, functional design, and trade mark logo of a product. For many consumer goods, packaging can be key to the identity of the product and thus its market appeal, meaning a potential loss of sales and harm to the original producer’s reputation if counterfeits reach the shelves.
We welcome old time collaborators and office neighbours the EU SME Centre, as one of our new blog contributors! Here’s their first blog post on due diligence in China:
European companies, both large and small, tend to be familiar with exercising due diligence, i.e. the checks performed to assess a potential business partner’s trust- and creditworthiness. With more than 24 million small and medium Enterprises (SMEs) active in the 28 Member States, dealing with each other on a daily basis, and over one quarter of those SMEs active internationally (importing, exporting, or both), one might assume that European SMEs are well prepared to venture into the Chinese market., However, this is commonly not the case; doing business in China for the first time is likely to be different to any other experiences a European company has had for a number of reasons.
Continue reading “Due Diligence in China – Back to Basics” »