Terms of Service

1. Introduction & Acceptance

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are entered into between you ("you", "the Client") and Zhongdu International Intellectual Property Agency Co., Ltd. ("we", "us", "our"). They govern:

• your access to and use of the website china-trademark.net (the "Site"); and
• any trademark search, filing, prosecution or related services you order from us (the "Services").

By accessing the Site, submitting an enquiry, or placing an order, you confirm that you have read, understood and accepted these Terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the Site or instruct us.

Where you place an order, these Terms together with your order confirmation and any written quotation we issue form the entire agreement between us. If there is a conflict, the written quotation or order confirmation prevails over these Terms to the extent of the conflict.

2. Definitions

• "Application" means a trademark application filed with CNIPA on your behalf.
• "CNIPA" means the China National Intellectual Property Administration, including its Trademark Office.
• "Fee" (费用) means the single, all-inclusive price we quote you for a Service. Unless we say otherwise in writing, it covers the Official Fee, our own professional fee, document translation and preparation, and full-process tracking of the Application. We do not apportion the Fee between these elements, and we do not invoice them separately.
• "Official Fee" (官费) means the statutory fee charged by CNIPA, as published by CNIPA from time to time. It is included in the Fee — we pay it to CNIPA on your behalf out of the Fee and do not charge you for it as a separate item.
• "Mark" means the trade mark, word, device or other sign you instruct us to search or file.
• "Power of Attorney" means the written authorisation (委托书) required for a trademark agency to act before CNIPA.

3. About Us

We act only as a trademark agency. We are not a law firm, and nothing on the Site constitutes legal advice. Where a matter requires litigation, court representation or a formal legal opinion, we will tell you and, if you wish, work alongside qualified Chinese counsel.

4. Scope of Services

4.1 What is included

Unless we quote otherwise in writing, our trademark registration service covers, for the class and number of items you select:

• a pre-filing availability search of the CNIPA database;
• advice on class and goods/services specification;
• preparation and translation of filing documents;
• payment of the Official Fee on your behalf;
• electronic filing of the Application with CNIPA; and
• full-process tracking of the Application through to registration, including forwarding of official correspondence.

4.2 What is not included

The following are not included and are quoted separately if required:

• review of refusal (驳回复审), opposition, opposition defence, invalidation, cancellation for non-use, revocation and other contentious proceedings;
• renewal, assignment (transfer), licence recordal, change of registrant name or address, and other post-registration matters;
• notarisation, legalisation, consular authentication or apostille of documents, where an authority requires it;
• responding to an office action that requires substantial legal argument beyond routine clarification;
• enforcement, customs recordal, administrative complaints and court proceedings.

5. No Guarantee of Registration

We warrant only that we will perform the Services with reasonable care and skill, and in accordance with the professional standards applicable to a CNIPA-filed trademark agency. We do not warrant that:

• any Application will be accepted, published or registered;
• any Application will be registered within a particular time;
• any search result is complete or free of error; or
• any registered right will be immune from opposition, invalidation or cancellation.

Common reasons an Application may fail include: conflict with an earlier identical or similar mark; lack of distinctiveness; the mark being descriptive, generic or functional; conflict with a well-known mark; bad faith; and opposition by a third party. We will advise you of risks we identify, but the final decision rests with CNIPA.

6. Trademark Search & the "Blind Period"

Our availability search is based on the CNIPA database as it stands on the date of the search. It is a risk-assessment tool, not a clearance certificate.

• Blind period (盲期). Newly filed applications are typically not visible in the public CNIPA database for a period of several months. A mark filed during that window cannot be found by any search.
• Other unregistered rights. Earlier unregistered marks, trade names, copyrights, design rights and domain names do not appear in the trademark database and cannot be searched by us.
• Similarity is a judgement. CNIPA examiners and opposing parties may take a different view of similarity from ours.

A "clear" or "low risk" search result therefore reduces, but does not eliminate, the risk of conflict or refusal.

7. Your Obligations & Warranties

You warrant to us that:

• you are at least 18 years old and have legal capacity to enter into these Terms;
• all information and documents you provide are true, accurate, complete and not misleading;
• you are the person or entity entitled to apply for the Mark, or you are duly authorised to act for that person or entity;
• the Mark does not infringe any third party's prior trademark, copyright, trade name, design, patent, personal name, portrait or other right;
• the Mark is not being filed in bad faith — in particular, not with the intention of squatting on, reselling or blocking a mark that belongs to someone else;
• the Mark does not consist of, or contain, a sign prohibited under Chinese law (including State names, flags, emblems, official hallmarks, or marks detrimental to public order or morals).

You must respond to our requests for information and documents promptly. Delay in providing a Power of Attorney, identity documents or translation instructions may delay filing and may affect your priority date.

8. Power of Attorney & Documents

CNIPA requires a trademark agency to hold a valid Power of Attorney before acting. You agree to provide a signed Power of Attorney in the form we supply, together with any identity or entity documents CNIPA requires.

In the ordinary course, a standard translation bearing our company seal (公章) and signature is accepted and no notarisation is needed. However, we cannot guarantee that an authority will not, in a particular case, require a notarised, legalised or consular-authenticated document. Where that happens, the additional cost is not included in our quoted fee and will be quoted separately.

9. Fees, Currency & Payment

All prices shown on the Site are in US dollars (USD) unless stated otherwise, and all payments are to be made in USD. Prices are exclusive of any value-added tax, goods and services tax, bank charges and currency-conversion charges, which are borne by you.

Payment is due in full before we file your Application, unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

9.1 Payment methods

We accept PayPal (by card or from your PayPal balance) and bank transfer (T/T). The methods available for your order are shown on your quotation.

• PayPal. Your quotation and your order page each carry a secure PayPal payment link. You do not need a PayPal account to pay by card. Your card and account details are collected and processed by PayPal; we do not receive or store them. Your use of PayPal is additionally subject to PayPal's own terms and privacy policy, and we are not responsible for any act or omission of PayPal.
• Bank transfer (T/T). Our bank details are set out on your quotation or order confirmation. You must quote your order reference with the transfer, and you bear all bank charges — including those of any intermediary or correspondent bank — so that we receive the full amount invoiced.

A payment is treated as received when PayPal confirms the transaction to us or, for a bank transfer, when cleared funds reach our account. We issue a receipt for every payment received, and any refund due under section 11 is normally made back to the original payment method.

9.2 Currency

Your Fee is quoted and payable in US dollars, and that figure is what you pay. The Official Fee inside it is denominated in Renminbi, so exchange-rate movements change what the filing costs us — not what it costs you; we bear that difference. If you pay in a currency other than USD, the conversion is made by PayPal or your bank at their own rate and at your cost.

10. Official Fees & Third-Party Costs

The Official Fee is set by CNIPA and is payable whether or not the Application ultimately succeeds. It is included in the Fee you pay us. We remit it to CNIPA on your behalf out of that Fee; it is not retained by us, and it is not charged to you as a separate item.

The Fee you are quoted covers the number of classes and the number of goods or services items stated in your order. If you later ask us to add classes or items beyond that number, we will tell you the additional cost in writing before we file, and you may confirm or withdraw.

Official Fee levels are published by CNIPA and may change without notice. Because the Official Fee is already inside your Fee, a change to it does not change what you pay — we absorb the difference. If a change were so large that it made your order uneconomic, we would tell you before filing and you could cancel under section 11.1.

Third-party costs that are not part of the filing itself — for example notarisation, legalisation, consular authentication, courier charges, or a foreign attorney's fee — are not included in the Fee. We quote them separately and incur them only with your agreement.

11. Cancellation & Refunds

11.1 Before filing

You may cancel your order at any time before we submit the Application to CNIPA. We will refund your payment in full, less:

• any third-party cost we have already incurred on your behalf and cannot recover — for example a courier, notarisation or legalisation charge; and
• where translation or document preparation has already been carried out, a translation and document-preparation charge of USD 30 per standard document set. If your documents are unusually long or technically complex, we will tell you the actual charge in advance and that figure applies instead.

No fee falls due to CNIPA until the Application is submitted. So where you cancel before filing, no Official Fee has been paid and none is deducted.

11.2 After filing

Once the Application has been filed, the Fee you paid for the filing stage is not refundable, in whole or in part. By then the work has been performed and the Official Fee has been remitted to CNIPA, which does not refund it.

Because your Fee is a single all-inclusive price, we do not apportion it between the Official Fee and our own fee, and no part of it is refunded separately.

11.3 Refusal or opposition

If CNIPA refuses the Application, or if a third party opposes it, the fees paid for the filing stage are not refunded. This is because the fee covers the work of preparing and filing the Application, not the outcome. Any further work — for example a review of refusal or opposition defence — is a separate service quoted separately.

11.4 Our error

If the Application fails because of a proven error on our part — for example we filed the wrong mark, the wrong class, or missed a deadline we had expressly assumed in writing — we will, at our option, re-file at our own cost or refund your payment in full. If you would rather have a refund than a re-file, tell us and we will refund in full.

A refund under this section is a refund of the whole Fee you paid. It therefore covers the Official Fee already remitted to CNIPA on your behalf as well: where the error is ours, we bear that cost ourselves and no deduction is made.

To request cancellation or a refund, email hello@china-trademark.net with your order reference.

12. Timelines & Delays

Any timeline we quote — including examination periods, publication periods and registration estimates — is an estimate based on CNIPA's published practice. CNIPA's actual processing time is outside our control and can be significantly longer.

We are not liable for delay caused by CNIPA, by you, by postal or courier services, by payment or banking intermediaries, or by any event referred to in section 19.

13. Confidentiality

We will keep confidential all information you give us in connection with the Services, and will not disclose it to any third party except:

• to CNIPA or another competent authority, as required to perform the Services;
• to our own personnel, translators and professional advisers on a need-to-know basis;
• where disclosure is required by law, regulation or court order; or
• with your prior written consent.

Please note: a trademark application becomes public once filed, and the mark, the applicant's name, the classes and the goods or services specification appear on the CNIPA register. Information you would prefer not to become public should not be included in a filing.

14. Personal Information

We collect and process personal information — such as your name, email address, telephone number, entity details, identity or business documents, and payment reference — in order to provide the Services, to meet our record-keeping obligations as a CNIPA-filed agency, and to comply with Chinese law. How we handle that information is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

Because we serve clients outside China, your personal information may be transferred to and processed in the People's Republic of China. By instructing us, you consent to that transfer and processing for the purposes described above.

Under the Personal Information Protection Law of the PRC, and where applicable the GDPR or other local law, you may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, subject to our legal retention obligations. Requests should be sent to hello@china-trademark.net.

We do not sell your personal information. We retain filing records for the period required by Chinese law and professional rules.

15. Website Intellectual Property

The Site and its content — including text, layout, graphics, logos, the Nice Classification data and its translations, and the underlying software — are owned by us or licensed to us, and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws.

You may view, download and print pages from the Site for your own internal business use. You may not reproduce, republish, scrape, reverse-engineer or commercially exploit any part of the Site without our written permission.

16. Lawful Use & Anti-Money-Laundering

Under the Trademark Law of the PRC and the regulations on the supervision of trademark agencies, we must not accept instructions that we know, or should know, constitute bad-faith trademark registration. We may therefore decline or withdraw from any instruction that:

• we believe to be a bad-faith or squatting filing;
• infringes another party's prior rights;
• violates Chinese law, public order or good morals; or
• we cannot verify as to the identity or authority of the person instructing us.

Where we decline or withdraw under this section after you have paid, we will refund your payment in full. No deduction is made, including for any translation, document-preparation or third-party cost already incurred — the decision to decline is ours, and the cost of it is ours.

You also agree not to use the Site for any unlawful purpose, to transmit malware, to attempt unauthorised access to our systems, or to interfere with the Site's operation.

17. Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with any order or these Terms is limited to the total fees you actually paid us for the Services giving rise to the claim;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of business, loss of goodwill, or loss of anticipated savings, however arising;
• we are not liable for any loss arising from the refusal, opposition, invalidation or cancellation of a Mark, or from the existence of an earlier right not shown in the CNIPA database at the date of search;
• we are not liable for loss caused by inaccurate, incomplete or late information or documents supplied by you.

The Site is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or free of harmful components.

18. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against any claim, loss, damage, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

• a breach by you of the warranties in section 7;
• a claim that the Mark infringes a third party's rights;
• your use of the Site in breach of these Terms; or
• any document or information you supplied that is inaccurate or misleading.

19. Force Majeure

Neither party is liable for failure or delay in performing its obligations where the cause is beyond its reasonable control, including act of God, natural disaster, epidemic or pandemic, war, civil unrest, act of government or regulator, failure of CNIPA or other public systems, failure of banking or payment networks, or general failure of the internet or utilities.

20. Suspension & Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Site, or decline to continue acting, if you breach these Terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud or bad faith, or if continuing would place us in breach of law or professional obligation. We will, where practicable, tell you why.

Termination does not affect any right or liability accrued before termination, and sections 13, 14, 17 and 18 continue in force after termination.

21. Governing Law & Disputes

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the Services, are governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

The parties will first try to resolve any dispute amicably through good-faith negotiation. If a dispute cannot be resolved within thirty (30) days of written notice, it shall be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration administered by the Jining Arbitration Commission (济宁仲裁委员会) in accordance with its arbitration rules in force at the time of submission.

• Seat of arbitration: Jining City, Shandong Province, People's Republic of China.
• Language: Chinese, unless the parties agree in writing that the arbitration be conducted in English.
• Tribunal: a sole arbitrator, unless the Commission's rules provide otherwise having regard to the amount in dispute or the complexity of the case.
• Award: final and binding on both parties, and enforceable under the Arbitration Law of the PRC and any applicable international convention.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from applying to a competent court for interim or protective measures before or during the arbitration.

These Terms are drawn up in English. If they are translated into another language, the English version prevails for dealings with clients outside mainland China.

22. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in law, CNIPA practice, our services or the Site. The revised version takes effect when posted, and the "Last updated" date above will change accordingly.

Where a change materially affects an order you have already placed and paid for, the version in force when you placed that order will continue to apply to it.

23. Contact Us

If you have any question about these Terms, or about any order, please contact us: