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One office examines every trademark application in China. Knowing what it checks — and what it does not — tells you where the real risk in a filing sits.
China’s trademark office sits within the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). It receives applications, examines them, publishes them for opposition, and issues registrations. Older documents and some official forms still refer to it as the CTMO, the Trademark Office under the previous administrative arrangement; the two names point at the same office and the same register, which is worth knowing before you read anything written before the reorganisation.
The part that surprises foreign brand owners is that the office examines relative grounds on its own initiative. It does not wait for an earlier rights holder to complain: an examiner will cite earlier similar marks against your application themselves. That is why a filing that collides with an existing registration is usually refused before anyone outside the office is involved, and why the clearance search matters more in China than in jurisdictions where the office only checks formalities.
The office also examines distinctiveness — whether your mark can function as a brand at all. Descriptive wording, generic terms and some non-traditional marks fail here regardless of whether anything conflicts with them.
This is the single structural difference between filing in China and filing at home, and it shapes everything about the cost.
A foreign applicant without a habitual residence or place of business in China must entrust a trademark agency established in China. There is no self-filing route, so the agent is not an optional convenience you can strip out of the budget.
The government charge is low, but because every foreign filing goes through a licensed agency you cannot access it by filing yourself. What you pay is the official fee plus the professional work around it. Our cost breakdown sets out both sides in full.
Needing a Chinese agent is not the same as needing a Chinese entity. A foreign company or individual can own the registration outright; your home address goes on the register as the applicant address.
Refusals, oppositions and cancellation actions all run to deadlines, and notice is served through the agent of record. Choosing an agent is therefore also choosing who will see that notice in time — see how to choose a China trademark agent.
The sequence is fixed, and the two places a file usually slows down are publication and substantive examination.
The application is submitted electronically through a licensed agent, in Chinese, with the goods or services worded to the office’s specification. You receive an application number and filing receipt.
The office checks the paperwork. Where something is missing or unclear it issues a correction notice with a deadline to put it right — a procedural step, not a refusal.
The application is published so that anyone who considers it conflicts with their own mark can oppose it. Formality examination and publication together typically take four to six months.
An examiner reviews the mark against earlier rights and for distinctiveness. This is where refusals come from. In a clean file, the total from filing to registration is usually around nine to twelve months.
Once the office allows the application, the registration runs for ten years from the registration date and can be renewed for further ten-year periods.
The register is public. The part that is genuinely hard is interpreting what you find in it.
The CNIPA register is open to anyone, and an exact-match lookup is free. That clears the obvious cases and is worth doing before you spend anything.
Whether two marks are “confusingly similar” is the examiner’s call, and it is made against Chinese-language conventions — including how a Chinese transliteration of your brand compares to what is already registered.
A mark filed in the wrong subclass of the right class is a wasted filing. Mapping what you actually sell to the right items takes experience with the office’s own classification practice.
The value of a professional search is the assessment, not the lookup: which hits matter, and whether to file as planned, reword, or not file at all.
Our trademark search service runs the register check and returns the result in writing, with an honest recommendation. Or use the class finder and fee calculator if you already know your classes.
Three of the most common situations, and the route each one has.
You can request a review within the deadline stated in the refusal notice. We report the refusal with the deadline and the options before anything is spent — refusal review is a separate, chargeable service.
A conflicting application can be challenged while it is published for opposition, before it registers. That window is short, so monitoring matters — see trademark opposition.
Two routes remain: invalidation, which attacks the registration itself, and non-use cancellation, which targets a mark that has sat unused for three continuous years.
Notice of a cancellation or invalidation action is served through the agent of record, and the deadline to answer runs from service. Missing it because nobody was watching is the most avoidable way to lose a registration.
Detailed articles on the office, its procedures and its deadlines.
Planning a filing? Start with China trademark registration, or see what the whole thing costs.
The office is part of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, usually shortened to CNIPA. Older documents, filing records and some official forms still refer to it as the CTMO, the Trademark Office under the former administration; both names point at the same office and the same register.
Yes, if you are a foreign applicant without a habitual residence or place of business in China. Under Article 18 of the Trademark Law such an applicant must entrust a trademark agency established in China. There is no self-filing route, which is why the agent fee is not an optional extra you can strip out.
The register is public and you can look up identical marks yourself. What self-searching does not give you is the assessment: which of the hits actually matter, how an examiner is likely to read similarity between your mark and an earlier one, and which classes and subclasses your goods fall into. The judgment is the part that changes the outcome.
Filing itself happens quickly once the application is prepared. From there, formality examination and publication typically take four to six months, and substantive examination brings the usual total to around nine to twelve months where nothing goes wrong. A refusal or an opposition makes the file take longer.
The office issues a refusal with its reasons, most commonly a conflict with an earlier mark or a distinctiveness objection. You can request a review within the deadline stated in the notice. We report the refusal with the deadline and the options before anything is spent; the review is a separate, chargeable service.
China is first-to-file, so an earlier Chinese filing by a supplier, distributor or unrelated third party can stand even where you used the mark first abroad. What you can do depends on timing: oppose during publication, or apply to invalidate or cancel a registration that is already granted. Each route has its own grounds and deadlines, and they are worth assessing early rather than after you have built plans on the mark.
This page was checked against the office’s published practice on 2026-10-13. Examination practice, deadlines and the rules on opposition periods change — the requirements in force at the time of your actual application apply, and we confirm the current position with you before filing.
Send us the mark and what you sell. We check it against the register and reply in writing with what we found and a fixed fee. Nothing is payable before you have seen the result.