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The sharing economy has had a substantial impact on the labor market and created challenges for companies in traditional industry and businesses. In conducting micro-comparative research on the existing standards that test the employment relationship between Uber and Uber drivers, this study reveals how different traditional labor law dogmas deal with the conundrum brought about by the sharing economy. The test of personal dependence derived from German labor law has been a model for China, Japan, and other civil law countries as the main standard to identify an employee. This test encounters a failure in the context of the sharing economy. Unlike China, the latest court decisions in the jurisdictions of the UK, the EU, and the US tend to increasingly categorize Uber drivers as employees. This study proposes that a new test or standard in labor law should be developed 'bottom-up' through the increasingly consistent development of local court decisions and local regulators' efforts. A category that lies midway between the employee and the semi-employee is proposed for Uber drivers and other workers intermediated by sharing firms. The sharing firms (platforms), rather than individual workers, would have the ability to undertake the social cost and economic burden incurred when they are categorized as employers in labor law. Only these platforms can invoke their technological and organizational power to reasonably allocate such costs and burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting field research and analysing judgments delivered in Beijing courts from 2004 to 2011, we find that the popular notion held by China's trade partners of the inadequacy of intellectual property protection is only partly supported by the empirical evidence. The likelihood of winning lawsuits is higher for foreign than domestic plaintiffs and the extremely low damages ruled by Chinese courts are due to particular causes. Courts lack consistent methods to calculate incurred losses in intellectual property right (IPR) infringements and consequently routinely apply the statutory damages whose upper limit is restricted by legislation. Efforts by Chinese legislators to enhance compensation by lifting the upper limit of awardable statutory damages in the Third Amendment of Chinese Patent Law (2008) did not seem to have an effect on our sample. Chinese policymakers should instead focus on the cause of the issue by providing more implementable guidelines for courts to calculate losses. Courts need to develop applicable conventions for calculating damages, based on objective criteria of how much compensation ought to be payable, which is also the basis of calculating reasonable statutory damages. Thus, the new provision of the "right of information" on pirated goods proposed by the ongoing Fourth Amendment provides a significant weapon to combat counterfeiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]