Effy Ai, Legal Specialist, PRH China
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Supervising and managing contract projects are my core responsibilities. This means the planning, reviewing, negotiating, and administrating of contracts. It may sound humdrum, but it’s quite demanding.
Most contracts are about copyright purchasing and local publishing. I help minimize any legal, potential risks, and maximize the commercial benefits. As part of my role, I monitor the essential decision-making process of every particular project. I also ensure that we archive digital and hard copies of every contract after they have been signed by the respective parties.
The Penguin Chinese Ink Painting series is one of our highlights this year. The set includes three books, telling three different little stories in classical Chinese with traditional Chinese ink painting illustrations. The most remarkable part is that each story is written by the Chinese characters with the same pronunciation. If you read it in mandarin, you will only distinguish the meaning based on different tones, which shows excellent literary value. The author’s sophisticated language skills made these books fun and educated.
Since it is an original project, it will face more complex and changeable situations when determining the business model and drafting the contract. My colleagues reached the agreement on the core business articles through several rounds of negotiation. Since this project differs from most of our routine tasks, the standard contract templates couldn’t be applied to our agreement. With the advice of an external lawyer, I drafted a new license purchase contract according to the situation.
As the project involved multi-party cooperation, it is more complicated and challenging for legal work. We must confirm whether the proven materials are binding and executing, determining whether the complete copyright can be granted to us without potential defects.
I’m still on the road of learning, and would love to interact with other colleagues in the contract departments in different regions.