Why the class list is not the protection you get

Picture two clothing businesses that each hold a registration in the same class of China's classification table. One covers the exact garment it sells; the other covers a heading that sounds broader than anything it actually makes. When a competitor brings a similar name to market, the two registrations behave very differently — and the difference has nothing to do with how much the applicant paid.

The reason is that a Chinese registration protects the goods and services listed on it, not the class it sits in. The class is a filing address. The list is the right. This guide is for foreign applicants who already know their way around the Nice system and are now dealing with the Chinese layer on top of it — the one that decides which of their listed items sit close enough together to matter.

The reference for what follows is CNIPA's Guidelines on the Correct Understanding of the Classification of Goods and Services for Trademark Registration, published in December 2023. It sets out how the Chinese table is built and how similarity between items is worked out — the part that surprises applicants from jurisdictions that stop at the class level.

Two layers, and only one is the Nice list

China adopted the goods part of the Nice Classification in 1988 and the services part in 1993, and joined the Nice Agreement in 1994. The office then did something with no direct equivalent in most home systems: using Nice as the base, it kept the framework and rules but added the goods and services names Chinese practice needed, and grouped the items inside each class into similar groups. The result is the Similar Goods and Services Table, usually translated as the Classification Table.

That table is expressly a reference — for the office when it examines similarity, and for administrative bodies and courts when they deal with trademark cases. It is where any analysis starts.

Structurally it mirrors Nice: 45 classes, classes 1 to 34 for goods and classes 35 to 45 for services, together covering more than ten thousand standard items. The Nice list is revised annually and the Chinese table is adjusted to follow. Alongside it, the office also publishes, at intervals, lists of acceptable goods and services names that fall outside the table altogether.

One practical consequence: the version that applies is the one in force at the date the application is submitted. Because the Nice list changes every year, an English-language drafting aid built on an older edition can describe an arrangement that no longer holds.

What one line in the table actually contains

An applicant who reads the Chinese table as a flat list of names misses most of what is on the page. Each class carries four things, plus a fifth that is easy to overlook.

The class heading describes, in rough terms, the goods or services that belong in the class — not exhaustively, but enough to orient a filing. Class 41, for example, is headed with education; training; entertainment; sporting and cultural activities.

The notes say what the class covers and, just as importantly, what it does not. Class 32 illustrates this: its notes state that the class covers mainly non-alcoholic beverages and beer, then list the specific items that are especially included and especially excluded.

The similar groups arrange the items into clusters — the metal containers group, for instance, or the rubber, resin and fibre products group — each named with a number.

The items are the individual entries an applicant actually selects — an accordion, to take a numbered example.

The fifth element is the cross-group note. Some similar groups carry a note underneath recording that an item in that group is treated as similar to items sitting in a different group. The communication and navigation equipment group, for one, notes that the telephone sets within it are similar to facsimile machines and fax equipment in another group, and that the group cross-searches against a subgroup that existed in earlier editions. These notes are the mechanism by which the tidy "same group, same treatment" assumption breaks down.

The rule engine: same group, cross-group, and the split group

Once the anatomy is clear, the similarity logic follows from it. Most of the time, items in the same similar group are similar to one another, and items in different similar groups are not. The guideline offers a clean pair of examples: items in the thermal insulation group and items in the household utensils group do not count as similar goods.

The exception worth internalising is the split group. Where items inside a single similar group do not all resemble each other, the table divides them into parts, usually marked with Roman numerals, and the note beneath the group governs. Take the rubber, resin and fibre products group, divided into four parts: the note states that the parts are dissimilar to one another, and that within the fourth part the items are dissimilar to each other as well. The usual "one group, one protection" intuition stops working here.

The third case is cross-group similarity, handled through the notes described above: where a group or a standalone item is linked to another, the note is what says so and what decides the question.

For items the table does not cover at all, the guideline points away from the groups and towards general perception: whether the relevant public would regard them as related, judged across the functions, uses, principal raw materials, production sectors, consumer groups and sales channels of a good, or the purpose, content, method, targets and setting of a service. The guideline is also explicit that the table's items are not a set of strictly parallel categories — some contain others, some overlap — so an applicant should read them by what the business actually does rather than treating the list as a menu of separate boxes.

Choosing items for the goods you really sell

The guideline's later section is addressed to applicants and reads as a set of worked examples. Three translate well into what a foreign filer faces.

The first is scope discipline. A business whose main activity is making clothing can select the relevant goods in Class 25, and the guideline observes that it would generally not be necessary to file in classes unrelated to its business — sewing and shoe-making machinery, advertising services, or transport and packaging services are the examples given. A class chosen out of habit is a line item on the bill with no protection behind it.

The second is the retail trade trap. The "sales promotion for others" group covers services that help someone else improve the market performance of their goods or services — advice, planning, consultancy. An ordinary retailer or wholesaler selling its own goods directly to consumers does not need to file there.

The third is search depth, where the cross-group notes pay off. An applicant wanting to register on "leather care, cleaning and repair" services would consult the table and find the item in the clothing, leather repair, protection and washing services group in Class 37 — then notice that the note under that group links it to leather finishing and tanning in another class. The search therefore has to cover both groups, not just the one where the item is listed.

The guideline carries the same logic into later stages. When a registration is challenged for non-use, the table is the reference for checking whether what was actually used matches what was registered. And when an owner monitors the market or brings opposition, invalidation, cancellation or litigation, the table's arrangement of similar groups defines a realistic scope for the claim.

Frequently asked questions

Does my registration protect the whole class if I hold one item in it?

No. What a registration protects is the goods and services listed on it. The class is the filing address, and the similar groups inside it are the working unit the office uses when it compares items. The guideline treats the table's items as the relevant level, and describes the groups, notes and parts as the tools for working out which items sit close enough to each other to be treated as similar.

Why does the same class seem to be protected in some cases and not others?

Because similarity runs through the similar groups and their notes, not through the class as a whole. Items in one group are generally treated as similar to one another, and items in different groups generally are not. Where a group is split into parts, or where a note links one group to another, that structure governs instead of the class heading.

Can I file a name that is not in the table at all?

Yes. The guideline provides for standard items listed in the table and for acceptable names outside it. A name outside the table is framed by reference to a standard name, following the class heading and the notes, and where that does not settle it, by the goods and services classification principles. It has to be clear and precise enough to be distinguished from other items, and is expressed in simplified Chinese characters.

Which version of the table applies to my application?

The version in force when the application is submitted. The Nice list is revised annually and the Chinese table is adjusted to follow it, so a filing made in one year and a filing made a year later can be classified against different arrangements. The office also publishes, at intervals, lists of goods and services names accepted outside the standard table.

Official sources

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