New East Asian Law Quick Reference Guide

The new East Asian Law Quick Reference guide is now available on the Gallagher Law Library website, replacing the old “East Asian Law Databases” page. The page highlights the most important resources for the legal systems of East Asia, with sub-sections for East Asia in General, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Taiwan. Convenient links to resources include pkulaw.cn, a Chinese legal database with full-text court decisions in English and Chinese, Westlaw Japan, with comprehensive access to full-text Japanese court decisions, plus many other important resources.

Find the new guide here:
http://guides.lib.uw.edu/law/eald/ealaw-quickref

New page highlights East Asian legal resources

Chinese Legal Citation Guidelines

Citation Guidelines (PDF) | Chinese Legal Research Guide | EALD 

"Citation Guidelines for Chinese Language Materials" is a handy guide created by UW Law School Ph.D. students Paul Tao-Chou Chang and Maria Jiang (editors), assisted by Luke Chuang and Jay Jiang. The project was completed under the direction of Professor Jane Winn, with some help from Rob Britt of the Law Library's East Asian Law Department (EALD). Now available on the Gallagher Law Library website (see links above), the new guidelines provide interpretations of Bluebook rules for Chinese legal citation, plus detailed examples showing good practices (see screenshot of page one, below).

Crocs Chomps on Lawsuit Victory Against Counterfeiters

At the end of 2012, Chinese courts sentenced eighteen Crocs counterfeiters to a total of more than 46 years in prison. One might be surprised that the comfortable footwear company has taken a less than relaxed approach against counterfeiters.

Dan Hart, the chief legal and administrative officer for Crocs made the following statement “If you attempt to produce or sell infringing Crocs products, we are going to find you and take definitive action to protect our intellectual property...We will not tolerate counterfeiters compromising our brand, and will continue to work with the authorities to hunt down and prosecute anyone who uses Crocs’ name, design or other intellectual property without permission.” Yikes, apparently Crocs have teeth!
 

Up until September 2012, more than 600,000 pairs of counterfeit Crocs were confiscated in China. In the meantime, we are left wondering how many of the 600,000 pairs of plastic footwear were destined for the "country's most dressed-down city"?

Photo credit: www.crocs.com

New Faculty Publication: Dongsheng Zong on China's "Attitude toward Human Rights

Dongsheng Zang, China's "Attitude" Toward Human Rights: Reading Hungdah Chiu in the Era of the Iraq War, 27 Md. J. Int'l L 263-303 (2012).

This article aims to challenge the way these questions [of China's rising economic power and its human rights records] are framed. By examining human rights as an example in the area of international law, this article argues that while China continues to be defensive on human rights, either by overstretching the notion of sovereignty, or by limiting human rights to a developmentalist point of view, a major shift emerged in its basic legal and political strategy in its relations with the United States on human rights after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It shifted from a defensive discourse to an offensive discourse by embracing the legal norms and standards established by existing international law and demanded that the United States comply with them. The popular view about China in the United States still insists on an old-fashioned conceptual framework. It creates new fears and yet offers little new insights. The so-called "realism"—characteristic of the Bush Administration‘s political philosophy within neocon policy circles—is simply out of touch with reality. [Id. at 265.]

True Religion Wins Default Judgment in Counterfeit Suit

For any denim worshipper, a sale on a favorite brand of jeans is as much of a miracle as manna falling from the heavens or feeding thousands on five loaves of bread and two fish. It probably seemed too good to be true when it appeared that True Religion was selling their jeans at a fraction of the normal retail cost on discount websites. And it was.

According to the Los Angeles Times, global trade of counterfeit goods is estimated at well over $600 billion dollars a year. As a result, True Religion - among many brands - has been fighting counterfeits for years and paying their counsel and anti-counterfeit enforcers handsomely to protect brand integrity and put a stop to the misuse of their label. The investment in their legal representation seems to have paid off when earlier this month a New York district court judge ordered more than a hundred websites selling counterfeit True Religion jeans out of China to pay True Religion $8.15 million each, for a total of $864 million in damages.

Whether True Religion will ever see any of these damages is unknown but perhaps the true success for the denim brand is that the judge also ordered that all of the sites be disabled and their domain names transferred to True Religion. Hallelujah.

If the thought of counterfeits makes your blood boil, check out Brand Integrity: Strategies for Fighting Contraband and Counterfeit Goods, by Craig A. Stewart, Anthony J. Franze, and Evelina Norwinski. KF3197.5.B73 2011 at Classified Stacks.

The Warriors of Qiugang - Grassroots Activism in China Today

Nominated this year for an Academy Award, The Warriors of Qiugang is a short documentary on a longstanding environmental dispute that took place in Anhui Province between a state owned chemical plant and the local community. It provides insights into environmental law, dispute resolution and the role of NGOs in China today.

The film is available for viewing for free online from Yale e360.

For a discussion of the legal issues that arose in the film, see the article by Alex Wang, Senior Attorney and director of NRDC's China Environmental Law, in the Huffington Post.

If you would like further information regarding green activism in China, see:
Green Anhui and Green Law China