News / Firm News

Ms. Lin ZHAO was invited to attend the China Licensing Conference and gave a keynote speech

July 25 – 27, Ms. Lin ZHAO, partner of Beijing East IP Law Firm, was invited by the International Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association (LIMA) to attend the 2018 Licensing Expo China Conference, jointly hosted by LIMA and United Business Media (UBM) in Shanghai. The conference aims to share and discuss the current status and trends of the global licensing industry, and to jointly promote the development of the licensing industry in China. Ms. Zhao was invited to give a keynote speech on “Licensing Contracts and Laws & Regulations”, to give suggestions on legal risks that may be involved in the commercial activities for licensing industry operators, and to answer practical questions concerned by licensing industry operators, which received favorable comments and high praises.

Ms. Zhao’s speech mainly focused on the key risks of the licensed rights, essential clauses of licensing contracts, and comprehensive solutions for contractual disputes.

Regarding the “licensed rights”, Ms. Zhao elaborated the meanings of legal terms including “license/authorization” which are popularly used the licensing industry through analyzing relationship between the types of licenses granted in the commercial activities and the “rights” granted from a legal perspective. Through professional and accurate analysis on license rights that may be involved in the animation characters, variety shows, art exhibitions, etc., Ms. Zhao offered her professional opinion on the relevant laws and regulations on the commercial marks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, personality rights, etc., and elaborated the key risks in relation to the features of these various rights.

Regarding the essential clauses of the licensing contracts, Ms. Zhao elaborated on the risk points of the whole process of license negotiation and attention-need-matters during the commercial negotiations, and proposed interpretations from the legal perspective and corresponding risk tips on contents of licensed rights, scopes, term, rights and obligations of all the parties, the effectiveness of contracts and other important contents.

Regarding the comprehensive dispute solution, to ensure that the operators of the licensing industry fully understand the disputes in order to select the best solution, Ms. Zhao elaborated on various types of disputes commonly seen in the licensing industry, and proposed comprehensive and multidimensional solutions. By comparing the features of various solutions, Ms. Zhao elobotaed the relevant consideration factors for disputes resolution of contract disputes and tort disputes.

Furthermore, Ms. Zhao established good communications with various licensing companies and provided her professional opinion on their concerned questions in practice, which received high praise from the conference organizer and attendees. Beijing East IP Ltd./Beijing East IP Law Firm will continuously engage in the multidimensional cooperation with the licensing companies to facilitate the global development of licensing industry.

Beijing East IP Ltd./Beijing East IP Law Firm (collectively “BEIP”) was founded in 2002 by Dr. Lulin Gao, the first commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, and several senior experts in the field of intellectual property law, located the headquarter in Beijing’s top class office building. Through the development of the firm, BEIP had set overseas brances in Silicon Valley, Tokyo and London, and within China in Ningbo and other places. The team of BEIP has nearly 200 personnel, including one hundred professionals from first-class universities in China, the United States, and Japan with degree of PhDs and masters. They possess not only good and professional education backgrounds on technology and law ranging from electronics, machinery, communications, biology to chemistry, and also are experienced qualified lawyers or patent agents. In addition, the professional process team and advisory experts work together to support BEIP to provide an efficient, professional and comprehensive services to clients.

For the past 16 years, BEIP has been focusing on providing all-round legal services related to intellectual property rights for domestic and foreign companies, and has represented many typical cases. The timely, comprehensive, cost-optimized and business-thinking services have won unanimous praise from customers.

Founded in 1985, the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA) is the most influential and Licensing non-profit organization in the global licensing industry. As the leader of the global licensing industry education and information, LIMA has been committed to promot the licensing industry around the world. Headquartered in New York, USA, with offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, China, Mexico, sending representatives of LIMA in Canada, Brazil, Italy, France, Russia, South Korea, India, the Middle East and North Africa, providing services to global members.

LIMA currently has more than 1,200 company members spread all over 30 countries and regions, including some internationally renowned companies such as Walt Disney Company, National Football League, Warner Bros., Hasbro, Li & Fung, Mattel, iQiyi, Huayi Brothers and Oriental DreamWorks. Members of LIMA come from different business areas of the licensing industry, including licensors, licensees, Licensing agents, manufacturers, retailers, brand consultants, legal and accounting services. etc.