Law & Business Podcast Episode 27: John Eastwood talks about IP and Manufacturing Issues in the Greater China Market

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The special guest in Episode 27 of the “Law & Business” podcast is John Eastwood, a partner at Eiger Law in Taipei.  John and Anthony discuss the issues that many American businesses have when they start production of their products in the Greater China Market.

As a senior partner of Eiger’s Greater China Practice, John has headed up the firm’s intellectual-property and technology practice for the past several years, assisting clients with trademark, patent, copyright and trade-secret matters. In John’s role chairing the the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT) Intellectual Property Rights Committee for the past many years, he has worked closely with the European Commission, U.S. State Department, prominent academics and local government authorities on intellectual-property policy matters.

Our first topic is about having a sourcing agent, distributor, or other local agent in China file a trademark application for the American business.  There are several pitfalls in having that local agent file a trademark application. Chances are the trademark application is badly drafted, only covering part of the product line or part of the scope of the planned-for business activities. John and his firm have seen filings that completely omitted key products and service activities because even a well-intentioned trading counterparty may not understand the business well. Local trading counterparts often don’t know how to respond to queries from the Taiwan IP Office (TIPO), meaning that they miss deadlines or
don’t know that some of these TIPO queries can be easily enough resolved.

This issue does not just happen in the the Greater China Market.  For example, Anthony discusses a case in which his firm represented a Germany company, whose local agent filed trademark application in his own name and was required to be a party in a trademark cancellation proceeding, despite not having worked for the company for several years.

Another topic John and Anthony discussed was the failure to supervise the manufacturing company in the Greater China Market.  There is some truth to the notion that when a foreign company makes goods in China, that business is basically training its own future competitors. John and Anthony discuss how a business owner is able to make sure those issues do not begin.  After all, John’s view is his firm has found that the pool of counterfeit manufacturers includes formerly authorized manufacturers, whose exact skills in making authorized products in the past make them able to make dangerously close counterfeits of products in the future.

When a local manufacturing partner starts to realize that the American business is not paying attention, that’s when they start to evaluate their own rational self interest in the form of under-reporting, running extra lines of unauthorized product, inflating costs, or other such games. Typically, such situations continue onwards until finally a day of reckoning comes where the European brand owner terminates the local manufacturer, whereupon the local manufacturer speedily moves on to making straight-out counterfeits of the product.  John gives some tips on how to keep that manufacturing company in the Greater China Market happy.  Relationships still matter and having feet on the ground helps build those relationships.

This was another fun episode to record.  It is chock full of excellent advice for any company trying to move outside of their home market and bring their manufacturing to the Greater China Market.

Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the podcast episode:

Anthony Verna:
All right, and welcome to the Law and Business podcast where we continue our series here at the International Bar Association’s annual convention from beautiful Sydney, Australia. I’m here with John Eastwood. How you doing, John?

John Eastwood:
Hey, g’day.

Anthony Verna:
Wow. After we just had  an Australian solicitor on last time, that’s going to be the worst Australian accent. He will not approve of that. John Eastwood is a member of the Taiwan Bar Association. How did I do?

John Eastwood:
Oh, not bad. No, Taipei Bar Association. But I’m originally from the US to come to the Australia is to love it. I’ve spent spent a bit of time and then, you know, I find that there are some things here in Australia that you know, you hear enough times and you haven’t seen it written out and you start to use the Australian pronunciation.

Inadvertently.

So, like, I think it was, we found out the other day, there’s a place oh, close to Perth that produces very wonderful wines called the Margaret river. But if you hear it without seeing it, you hear it enough times from locals, you actually, you know, think it’s the Magritte river and you start saying it like that. So, I have to be careful not to use an Australian pronunciation just for any Australian lawyers out there.

Anthony Verna:
It’s like my friends who live in Rome, they say weird things happened to your English after you stop using it.

John Eastwood:
I gotta try that next year. Next year the IBA will be in Rome. So, we’ll be like…

Anthony Verna:
So John, you focus on intellectual property and commercial agreements, litigation in the greater China market. Again, how did I do?

John Eastwood:
Yeah. Perfect. Perfect.

Anthony Verna:
All right. It’s sometimes hard to describe everybody’s practice areas. So let’s start here. I want to talk about a little bit about the main differences between Taiwan and China and trademark filings that trip up a lot of American and European companies because you’ve written about it. And it is something that I’ve seen trip up my clients and I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of problems.

John Eastwood:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing is that if you don’t choose your Chinese name for your product or company, the market will choose one for you. Because in a non-English environment, they actually don’t say, I mean, for example, Coca-Cola, in Chinese it’s Cuh-Coe Cuhla and there’s a lot of different subtle differences. So if you don’t choose it, you can have an opportunity to give your product something that has a really nice meaning in the Chinese language, it has a nice sound, maybe even helps to promote your product or you go with whatever the consumers decided to start nicknaming your product.

And once they do that and you don’t have it registered, then there’s the possibility of somebody else jumping in and then it’s so hard to undo those situations. And another thing I think, is it’s important to consider is logos, because imitation is a form of flattery, but sometimes people they think through their like well I just want to get the word mark. And the logo people are very inventive in the greater China area at coming up with logos that look very close to yours and word marks that look very close. They take advantage of the fact that an O is curved like a C and they very much tailor their infringing style, kind of bad faith trademark applications to match in with the overall shape of the letters. And in that sense, they actually very well know that they’re trying to appeal to a non-English reading audience.

And you run a risk, a real risk with the trademark authorities there, the prosecutors if you’re taking a criminal action or anything else because, if somebody goes and registers that and the word is spelled a bit differently, there’s a funny tendency for officials to think, well, my English is really good and I’m looking at this and this is spelled really differently. But not really looking at the whole thing for how like an O can curve like a C or a capital I looks like a lowercase L and there’s a lot of tricky stuff like that that they do pull off.

Anthony Verna:
In China, then it sounds like getting yourself to the intellectual property office and getting that application down is of utmost importance unlike in the US yeah.

John Eastwood:
Yeah. So, speed is of the essence. It’s really smart to, to get ahead of the curve. I would always recommend clients to consider, to get a word mark, a logo, and to think about what their Chinese market is. Some companies haven’t thought that through yet, but I think it’s a good idea to try to have as much harmony as possible. So, if you have one Chinese name that’s registered in Taiwan and Hong Kong and in mainland China that you all have that be the same one. Because I’ve seen it over and over that companies will register different marks cause they didn’t really think it through and they kind of did it piecemeal. They did one than the other and they were blocked out by the third. And you could see this many years ago, many, many years ago going back to the 15, 16, something like that. Intel had two different names in one for Taiwan, one for China, and it was like ing-tuh-er or ink-dye-er and no company wants to be in that situation.

I recall that they fixed that up a long time ago, but there was a period of a number of years where they just couldn’t be under the same name in all the jurisdictions.

Anthony Verna:
I know that a lot of companies who are foreign to the greater China market need to have a partner with feet on the ground. Is that somebody who’s reliable for registering a trademark in the greater China market?

John Eastwood:
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve seen some really sneaky stuff there. So, like on one hand, I mean there’s, there are some people, it’s like as a matter of dealing with your downstream partners or even somebody that’s upstream, it’s a sourcing partner, but you are dealing with somebody. Oftentimes they want to have some sort of trademark protection in the jurisdiction. They want to know that you are going to protect the brand and if you don’t step in, they’re going to want to offer to step in. And sometimes they do this on a good faith basis, but we also caution to be very careful of what you allow them to do. You should be filing your own trademarks. Don’t let them file it because for example, the relationship at the beginning at the outset is wonderful. And then you find out, they say, well you should have your trademarks registered. So, you go and you file, you let you let them file in their name. Well if the relationship with that sourcing agent or distributor ever goes south, you will not be able to terminate them very well because they’re the ones holding your trademark. And there’s no way to really say that’s bad faith cause they really were using it. So, undoing those situations and you have to be very sneaky and trying to undo those situations cause usually people only think about  I guess we’ve got to get our trademarks back. They’re only thinking of that when they want to terminate the relationship. I mean just to be honest, I mean, if you’re a distributor and somebody comes around and says, Hey you know, isn’t it, it’s about time we changed it. I mean, in fact, most of the time we have to go and say, look, this is a global policy and we have to give them some sort of assurance that they’re not in danger of being terminated right away. And usually the client has to find some way of kind of moving forward even if it means having to retrain them or try to improve the relationship. If the relationship has been going back, they have to find a smarter way. Because once you let somebody register your marks and we’ve seen all sorts of stuff…
We’ve even seen things where the local partner says, I know what to do. I can do it cheaper, I can file for it. But you know, they said they’re going to file for you. When it turns out they filed for themselves. And when you confront them, they say like, “Oh, I, I um, yeah, I did that by accident. I filed a friend of my own name by accident.” You know, and it’s just like, oftentimes they don’t know your full product line. So they actually, in terms of the classes or the items that they register, they may actually really be thinking they don’t, for example, you may distribute clock radios for you, but they’re not thinking of the fact that you also sell camcorders and skin creams or something like that. You know, they’re not thinking of your full product line, whatever it is.

Anthony Verna:
And in China, if I recall correctly, the classes are much more specific than in other jurisdictions in the world. Am I…

John Eastwood:
Insanely specific. So, they have totally subclasses and it’s like you can have like two marks that are very similar to be within the same class, but the subclasses are different. So, it’s okay. And you monkey around with that. You’re really looking for trouble. It costs a little bit more, but it’s worth it to pay attention to the full spectrum of what you’re really doing and what you anticipate doing. Realistically. I saw Japanese company. And it was funny. It was really weird because what they did was, and they’re quite famous because they do a children’s TV program. And you know, they have not just the typical things of like CDs and DVDs for songs and for the TV show and they have magazines and publications cause they put out a magazine of printed materials.

So, but they also registered okay well for clothes, for tee shirts for kids and things like that. You would imagine that’s okay, but then also for every form of kitchenware possible.

Anthony Verna:
Kitchenware? So like aprons and…

John Eastwood:
Yeah. Yeah. And like you know, in case you wanted to buy a toast machine that would put an image of this particular…

Anthony Verna:
I’ve seen that with Battlestar Galactica, put your toast in, get a Cylon  image on your toast.

John Eastwood:
Right, right, right. I think Hello Kitty was a pioneer in that area. And in this case it’s a little tiger called Chao Wu, and it’s interesting cause we were looking at it and we’re like, Oh my God, they have registered trademarks in literally every single class you could register. They’ve gotten registration…. it’s something like financial services and like, banking and, and I’m just like, why? Why would you do this?

Anthony Verna:
Is that because they’re actually in those subclasses or is that just because they’re registering to register and block everybody else and that’s just the wild, wild West.

John Eastwood:
I think they were thinking of going for a blocking mark.. And that’s gone passe. And it’s also insanely expensive. And I think maybe what happened is I think one of the important things is on one hand, I have to tell clients, tell a certain group of clients you need to register for more. But I have another group of clients who doesn’t know anything about trademark. And it goes the opposite way where I have to tell them you need to register less because you are running a serious risk for non-use cancellations all over the place.

Anthony Verna:
And that’s the same advice I give clients in the United States. I mean, if you’re filing for a whole bunch of goods and services, even if they’re in the same class as what you’re doing, you’re going to run that risk there as well. And I’ve certainly seen that happen. Like you have a list of 300 goods and services. I know you’re only making two, so, yeah.

John Eastwood:
Oh, but someday I want to build a rocket ship. I mean, and it’s hilarious cause you’d tell them, , okay, well you know… I mean there was a client several years ago, they really, what they do is they’re property developers. Okay. But then they started thinking, well, as part of my work, , we often import fancy schmancy tiles and things like that from other places. So maybe I’m a tile importer.

It’s like, no, you’re not really offering that service to the outside world. Right? You’re doing this for yourself. You bring in, you import tiles. This is not like you’re trying to put down business scopes in a corporate registration cause you might actually do that activity. You might want to be registered as an importer in some way in that other customs corporate registry sense. But, but from the standpoint of, engaging in the business of like, do you offer the service to third parties? No. You advertise it? No. Do you show up at trade shows and say I import tiles? No. That’s like you have to walk them through and say please, because I’m not greedy. And when I saw this, one company and they registered in like 45 classes and they’d registered multiple marks across that. And I was just like, the day that this was confirmed and paid for, and I’m sure they put together a package of some kind where they said I’ll give you 10% off. Sure, but even then you could probably buy a boat with that.

Anthony Verna:
Getting back to a local partner on the ground. I had a situation in the opposite direction in the United States where the company contacted me because their trademark was being canceled and it turns out that they actually had a salesperson, so they had it in the salesperson’s name in the United States because he was their head salesperson, except he wasn’t their head salesperson in the United States anymore. So, here the trademark is now being canceled because this person is effectively not using the trademark in the United States. So, I filed a motion to change parties and what the trademark trial and appeal board did instead was they decided to join my client, the company. And meanwhile, here is a person who really didn’t use the marks. He was the salesman. So, he wasn’t using the mark himself. He now also is out of the United States living, I forget in which country he was living, but he wasn’t in the United States anymore.

So now he’s still on the hook to testify because he’s one of the parties. The board wasn’t going to acknowledge the fact that he wasn’t there. He was listed as the owner of the trademark at the time of the cancellation. And he was kept in the proceeding.

John Eastwood:
Oh my God.

Anthony Verna:
This doesn’t happen often in the US but…

John Eastwood:
In Asia there’s a lot of kind of weird legacy issues. People are really good at starting stuff up and they’re really bad at shutting things down or they’re really bad at like bringing finality towards, and I think maybe it’s cause it’s awkward. I think there’s like a mental block sometimes that people in companies have or they don’t think comprehensively about these things. And to give a funny example there, when a company goes inactive, often what they do is rather than going through the real procedures for shutting it down, they just kind of abandon the company and stop paying taxes and doing their filings.

You know, that’s in Asia. I was really surprised once we were actually hired by a global law firm to shut down their Taipei office, which was no longer peopled anymore. And you know, it’s kind of funny from a professional standpoint, the legal profession, we actually had to go find, cause the office was there, the furniture was still there, but no one had been showing up to work for several months. And so we had to actually find the former and still according to the records, registered managing partner and go and ask them, Hey, can you like stamp some of these forms to like shut down this… Can we just assist you with this?

Can we get this done for you because you’re not doing it. But I mean like a lot of companies run across this too. So when it comes to the trademarks, they never want to have that awkward conversation with like, “Hey, you know, remember like 10 years ago when I said it was really cool if you… you went new filed all sorts of stuff for us and in your own name and you know, that was kind of a bad idea. And you know, I know you’re not even working with us anymore and you’re going to another country. But like, you know, can we have your signature on these three documents to like just go take your family out for a nice dinner…” Like they don’t think about how to ease this cause there’s always human issues behind this.

I mean one of the nice things about intellectual property is you’re dealing with like perceptions of a brand. And on the record, one of the few times you’ll find me agreeing with Donald Trump on something will be this, is that when he says like, “Oh, you know, the value of my business, the value of my Trump brand, the value of my brand goes up and down depending on how I feel.” But there is a very subjective nature to the value of trademarks and of course, and like what you do with it. And the franchise area for example, that that leads to some really interesting issues where there’s such a close tangible relationship between quality and service and what you do and the value of the brand. And every day you’re kind of starting fresh. If there’s any kind of, like for example, you have a restaurant, a franchise restaurant. If one of your franchisees, serve someone up a big bowl of botulism or something, and there’s so much about why quality inspections and safety inspections and…

Anthony Verna:
It’s one of those issues that, that when somebody tells me I want to franchise my business, I say okay, my first step with you is you give me your business steps. And like, chances are when they’re starting from that standpoint, they haven’t even started. Like what are their steps to their business? Yes, you have to license the name, you have to license the colors on the wall, you have to license what furniture everybody is buying. Yes. But you’re licensing the business model. So, write down your business model is always step number one. And then step number two is how do you make sure that the other guy follows that?

John Eastwood: (18:01)
Right, right, right. I mean I’ve got a new client, actually  it’s an old friend of mine, but, I was telling him, cause he runs an investigation firm that’s done a lot of intellectual property rates over the years, but he’s starting to move into the franchising of a restaurant concept, , in which he would be the franchisor, and I talked with him and I said, you know, you’re actually in a extraordinary advantage here because in terms of checking up on your franchisees, some of them are going to be the ones that embrace the system and doing things the right way. They’re going to really like this. And the ones who kind of rebel against, and there’s always a few that feel like I know how to cook this better, you know, I’m gonna turn the oven up a little more.

You know, they do want to do something. I am only going to wash half the dishes or something. I mean, anyone who tries to buck the system, I said, well, you know, you’ve got an investigation for, I mean, the possibility to be able to sneak someone into the middle of there, you know, or just to watch what they do, or to take a look, you’re going to be able to document the failings of anyone who fails. So, you’ll have another reason for creating this enforcement climate this thing where people will want to comply.

Anthony Verna:
So speaking of enforcement, let’s talk about manufacturing in China because a lot of people who are starting businesses or owned businesses that are manufacturing consumer products, pick up the phone, call me and say, well, I want a manufacturer in China, or I’m currently manufacturing in the US and I know China is cheaper and I want to save that money.

And I get to be a little cynical about the protections available in China. But, uh, can you save me from that? That cynicism that a client, a company, will go into China, manufacturer in China and then see counterfeit products everywhere.

John Eastwood:
Well, yeah, there’s, there’s an interesting thing. I mean, okay, so for one thing is that a lot of people who do business in Taiwan don’t realize that they’re probably also doing business in China without knowing it, right? Because the Taiwan company has a factory and that’s really where they’re going to make the goods. But in China all the time,  there’s the potential. If you have a product and they know it’s hot, it’s good. They know it’s like the hot new thing. I mean, then you run a risk that somebody who’s a manager who’s learned how to make this thing or knows how to make this thing is simply going to go to another factory and start cranking out the fakes of it.

So in clothing, apparel, your former factories are actually a big source of problems because if you don’t close things out cleanly, if you don’t grab the molds back or if you don’t get, you don’t find a way to strip away from them. They keep the capacity to do this. Right. And then what they’ll do, … I mean, we see this all the time, for example, in shoes and apparel and other things. They’ve learned how to make some fancy, highly fashionable clothes and shoes and other things. And they don’t want to stop making money from that. And I’ve seen also this kind of weird like kind of suicidal desire or like counterproductive; it’s like that desire to make a little extra profits. So, they’re making like 200 million… I was gonna change the currency to something like more US’ish.
Okay, say you’re making 2 million, you’re making 2 million US dollars a year making legit products and boy, aren’t you happy you’re making $2 million profits from making tons of stuff for an American company and in order to make an additional $200,000, you like go and you run an extra line at night. Now the company finds out about it. They find out that products coming out, that you’re using seconds, and you’re selling things out the back door and that your employees have been hiding things under…

Anthony Verna:
And you get the classic definition of a gray market good.

John Eastwood:
Right? So, you get kind of like you get busted, you know, making stuff that’s sort of semi legit, but now it’s an infringement. It’s going be actually considered infringement because it’s an unauthorized product.

Correct. Whereas like some gray markets where they’re going to be like a lot of the gray markets are going to be like, it would be intended for the Philippine market, but because that one was priced lower that you can arbitrage that by bringing that in elsewhere. But in this case what happens is they lose the whole deal. So, they were making, you know, $2 million and they decided to get an extra 200,000 and added on a 10% bit of juice for themselves. And in doing that, they lost everything. And it’s a little weird because they were on top of the world. I mean, they actually had a strong relationship with the original company. Now there is no trust, now nobody will work with them. And so now they’ve kind of like descended into the pirate world of every time you see them thereafter, all they’re doing is making pirated goods.

Anthony Verna:
When I’ve dealt with that situation in the US, I’ve needed to sue the seller of the counterfeit goods. For bigger companies, you can’t go whacking that mole every single time. So,  what’s the better way of taking care of that?

John Eastwood:
Well, one thing is to watch them really carefully. So, I mean, the clients that have good compliance programs tend to go to their factories. You can’t start a relationship with the factory in China and then just say, “Oh well, you know, I’m done walking around dusty factories. I’m not going to do this anymore. I don’t have to do this for five years.” You know, that’s a bad way to go about it. You should be going there. Like you know, you don’t get cheap on that. You need to be over there like every couple of months and you should keep track of your waste product.

You should have like into your contracts, like very clear ways that they’re supposed to control things like buttons and zippers and all sorts of other products that have… like for example, a lot of clients, in the fashion industry, they’ll have marked into the button, you know, around the rim of it there, their product name, your tags, the things that will be sewn into the inside. In fact, there are companies that also provide, like a lot of security devices or things like that. QR codes that are scannable and where…

Anthony Verna:
Or blockchain these days if you’re able to get that level of sophistication.

John Eastwood:
That’s where everything’s going is so the stuff behind  Bitcoins, the blockchain technologies, things like that are eventually going to start providing greater authentication abilities. And for example, , one of my clients has a deal where it’s like they’ve got an app which allows them to very swiftly check if a product is legit or not.

And there’s things that they know, they have a lot of expertise, they know, right? Like they know what their boxes exactly are supposed to look like and they’ve built into it little protections. I have a client that does franchise restaurants and stuff. And so, one of the things they do is all aspects of the decor of that restaurant are also copyrighted. Sure. So, they’re thinking beyond the trademark, but they’re also thinking too like, well you decided to keep our wallpaper up. And it’s like, how do I know? You know, that’s your wallpaper. Well, here’s our name and we know the name of our company has actually been put into the foot of that animal over there.

Anthony Verna:
That’s highly creative. So, in terms of manufacturing in China, can you help me be optimistic about manufacturing in China and economic benefits thereof and protection of intellectual property?

John Eastwood:
There are good companies out there and there are good Chinese companies. People are people. One of the prime regrets of one of my colleagues is that he felt that within the greater China context that… his great sadness… he was a professor. So, he has these philosophical thoughts. And he’s like, my big sadness is that, you know, there’s less, there’s not as much trust between people as you as I would like to see. And it’s absolutely true. So, people are people and you can find people that you can trust, and you can also build bonds. And I know that in all these books about how to do business in China, they talk about Kwon Shi, you know, the relationship. And in the Chinese sense, when you add Shay to the end of a word, it’s like our equivalent in English of ology, like a biology or chemistry to common, like chemistry or any of this.

Anthony Verna:
Almost like a relationshipology.

John Eastwood:
Yes, exactly. So, in mainland China, there’s this, there’s actually a phrase which is called . And many years ago there was a really good book written by Mayfair Yang, a professor. She was visiting Peking university a long time back and I read her book; a lot of us loved reading the book, but it talked about Guanxi Shri, the concept of relationship ology and the notion that you can actually take it to that next level. You start out and maybe it was a bit like networking, but then you actually move it onto a real friendship and a real kind of combined, you know, like a shared, I’m not gonna say shared destiny cause that sounds too goofy but like, a kind of sense where you actually have like a genuine sense of feeling and caring about what happens too.
And you know, so you, that’s why you go out, that’s why you go to these dusty factories and you drink a million cups of tea and you go out for a big banquet and you sing karaoke with them. And yet you, you smoke a million cigarette, you don’t have to smoke cigarettes anymore. That’s old school. But like the old days you do these things and you still, in this modern day, you pay attention to people. So, paying attention to other humans, treating your Chinese manufacturing counterparts like in a humane good way can actually have big dividends and not just to think of it. I mean the main problems I’ve ever seen for people have been when they ignore that context and they establish a relationship with a factory, shook hands, sign an agreement and then never paid attention because it’s also a part of human nature that if for example, if you have a licensing, a relationship with the company and they make widgets and if they are the ones kind of handling a little bit more of the selling.

If you do that, then you have, for example, under-reporting, right? If they note, if they realize, for example, one month they left off a zero at the end of the number of items you don’t notice and if you don’t notice, they’re going to be like, I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. Oh my God, that first time was a mistake and like the next time it ain’t such a mistake and you’re not clear that you’re not paying attention. If you have a person who pays attention to like, Hey, what’s this and a zero missing. You know, like they’d be like, well …the next time a, Oh yeah, I’m going to be over in your office next month. You know, let’s go out for lunch. You know, and there’ll be like, Oh, he’s coming. Like, we can’t … he comes here all the time.

They make decisions, rational business decisions about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to treat you. And if you’re someone that they like and know that they do business with and, which there’s like a real sense, but if you’re like some far away person just kind of pushing remote control buttons, asking for orders of stuff…. You know, that whole dynamic is missing.

Anthony Verna:
Once you’re out of sight, out of mind, it’s going to break down.

John Eastwood:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think bridging that barrier is important. I mean, there are language issues and there are things and I know that Chinese sense of entertaining to some Westerners is not as much fun as, but, the same thing for it goes the other way. I mean like, you know, sometimes the Western idea of you want to take them to a baseball game or to a football game or something like that and they’re like, what is going on?
So, fair about is fair play. I mean, you’d go out and you’d be a good sport, take good care of them. They take care of you. Be very careful to listen. You know, word of mouth, pay attention to things. Occasionally double check things, watch things carefully and then you can have a productive relationship because there are some really honor bound companies and I have seen some like companies where we did full on investigations and we had people recording phone calls and doing cause you can do that, one party’s approval, you’ve eventually you catch someone out. And I had a CEO come over to our office once from a large Taiwanese manufacturer and he profoundly apologized and he immediately signed the apology notice that if we’d wanted to we could’ve published. And we didn’t, our client chose not to because they actually looked at it and they said this guy didn’t question anything. We were very tough, and he didn’t flinch in apologizing completely in immediately and taking immediate remedial steps to ensure that his staff never did any of this stuff again.

Anthony Verna:
John, that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much for being on.

John Eastwood:
Huge pleasure.

Anthony Verna:
And maybe we could do this again over Skype.

John Eastwood:
Excellent. Excellent. Looking forward to it.

Anthony Verna:
All right, John. Thank you.