Trademark Registration in China – Procedure

Updated November 2026

Filing a trademark in China looks simple on paper: one form, one fee, one certificate. In practice, six stages sit between your decision and a registration certificate. Each stage has its own deadline, and a missed deadline costs months rather than days.

Most foreign applicants lose time at two points. They prepare a goods list that CNIPA cannot accept, or they miss the fifteen-day window that opens after a refusal. This guide sets out the full procedure, the official fees, and a realistic calendar for 2026.

The short answer

• Six stages: preparation, filing, formal examination, substantive examination, publication, registration.
• The statutory examination limit is nine months. CNIPA averaged four months in 2025.
• A clean application registers in about seven months. A refusal or an opposition pushes that to eighteen months.
• Official fee: RMB 300 per class on paper, RMB 270 online, with ten items included in each class.

1. Who files, and who must appoint an agent

A foreign applicant with no domicile or real business presence in China must appoint a trademark agency established in China. Article 18 of the Trademark Law leaves no room for self-filing. A Chinese company, by contrast, may file on its own through the CNIPA portal.

Check one thing before you sign: whether the agency is on CNIPA’s recordal list. Filing an application is easy. Reading a search report, drafting a goods list that survives examination and answering a refusal are not. A cheap agency that only submits forms will hand you a refusal notice eleven months later, and it will charge again to fix it.

The power of attorney

A signed power of attorney is enough in ordinary cases. CNIPA does not normally require notarisation or legalisation, so a scanned copy signed by an authorised signatory usually clears formal examination. Keep the original: you will need it again for renewals, recordals and any review.

2. What to prepare before filing

Five items decide whether the application runs smoothly:

• The mark itself. A word mark, a device, or a combination. File in black and white if you may change colours later.
• Applicant documents. A passport copy for an individual, a certificate of incorporation for a company, with the name matching the document exactly.
• The goods and services list. Nice classes plus Chinese subclasses. Most applications go wrong here, for the reasons set out in the Nice classification article.
• The power of attorney. Signed by someone with authority to bind the applicant.
• A priority claim, if you have one. Six months from the first filing abroad, claimed on the filing date itself.

That last point deserves emphasis. You cannot add a priority claim later. If you filed at home four months ago and you want the earlier date in China, the claim has to appear in the original submission, with a certified copy to follow within three months.

3. Stage one: filing

Your agent files electronically through the CNIPA procedure portal. CNIPA then issues an application number and a filing date. That date is the one that matters, because China awards the mark to the first applicant, not to the first user.

Two habits save trouble here. First, file every class you need on the same day. Otherwise a competitor who spots your launch can block the later filing. Second, keep the filing receipt. You will need the application number for priority claims, for oppositions and for any evidence of good faith later.

4. Stage two: formal examination

Formal examination checks the paperwork, not the mark. It usually runs one to two months. An examiner looks at the applicant name, the scope of the goods list, the clarity of the specimen and the completeness of the power of attorney.

If something is wrong, CNIPA issues a correction notice. You then have thirty days to respond. Thirty days sounds generous until you count the time zone, the signing authority and the courier. Missing it does not pause the file; the application simply proceeds on the defective record, or lapses.

Three defects cause most correction notices. The goods wording falls outside CNIPA’s accepted subclasses. The applicant name differs by one letter from the certificate of incorporation. Or the power of attorney carries a signature that does not match the named signatory. All three are avoidable at the preparation stage.

5. Stage three: substantive examination

During substantive examination, an examiner tests the mark against the law. Article 28 of the Trademark Law sets a nine-month limit. CNIPA has run well inside that limit for years, and it averaged four months across 6.15 million applications in 2025.

Two sets of grounds apply. Absolute grounds cover signs the law excludes outright: national names and flags, generic terms, descriptive wording, functional shapes. Relative grounds cover conflict with earlier rights, which in practice means an earlier identical or similar mark on the same or similar goods. The detail sits in China’s absolute and relative grounds.

If CNIPA refuses the application

A refusal is not the end. Under Article 34, you have fifteen days from receipt of the notice to apply for review. The review goes to the CNIPA review board, which must decide within nine months, extendable by three. The official fee is RMB 750 on paper, or RMB 675 online.

Fifteen days is the single hardest deadline in the whole process for an overseas company. The notice arrives by post or through the agent, and it needs a signed authorisation before anyone can act. This is the practical reason to have an agent in place from day one rather than after a problem appears.

6. Stage four: publication and opposition

Once the examiner approves the mark, CNIPA publishes it in the gazette. Article 33 gives third parties three months from publication to oppose. An opposition costs RMB 500 on paper or RMB 450 online, and CNIPA must decide within twelve months, extendable by six.

That window changes on 1 January 2027. Article 36 of the revised law cuts the opposition period to two months. The gazette date decides which rule applies, so an application published in December 2026 keeps the three-month window, while one published in January 2027 gets two.

For brand owners, the change cuts both ways. Registration arrives faster, but monitoring has to be monthly rather than quarterly. For applicants, silence during the window is good news, and the file moves to registration.

7. Stage five: the certificate

CNIPA now issues the registration certificate electronically. The right runs for ten years from the registration date, and you can renew it indefinitely. From that date you may use the ® symbol. Before registration, the ™ symbol carries no legal effect in China, though nothing stops you from using it.

Registration is not the end of the story. Two obligations follow. First, you must actually use the mark on the goods covered. Any third party may apply to cancel a mark that has gone unused for three consecutive years, and Article 57 of the revised law lets CNIPA cancel such marks on its own initiative from 2027. Second, you must not alter the registered mark, the name or the address without recordal.

Build the use file as you go. Keep dated invoices, packaging, screenshots and advertising contracts that show the mark in China. Reconstructing three years of evidence after a cancellation petition arrives is far harder than filing it month by month.

8. Stage six: keeping the right alive

Four housekeeping tasks protect the registration afterwards:

• Renewal. File within twelve months before expiry. A six-month grace period exists, at a higher fee.
• Recordal of changes. Record any new company name or address. Unrecorded changes block renewals and assignments later.
• Licensing. Record the licence, otherwise you cannot assert it against a good-faith third party.
• Monitoring. Watch the gazette for conflicting filings, and act inside the opposition window while it is open.

A registration that nobody watches is a registration that quietly loses value. Competitors file similar marks in adjacent classes, and the register fills up. Bad-faith filings remain common, and recovering a mark costs several times what watching it would have cost.

9. The calendar, month by month

10. What it costs

The official fee schedule has not moved since 2019. CNIPA publishes the schedule per class, with ten items of the chosen class included. The figures below are for paper filings. Filing online trims about ten per cent off each fee, and an online change of name or address is free.

Agent fees sit on top and vary by a factor of five. Ask for a per-class quote that states what happens if CNIPA refuses, and whether the quote covers a review. A quote that covers filing only is not a quote for the whole job.

11. Six mistakes that add months

• Copying a foreign goods list instead of drafting for Chinese subclasses.
• Filing a colour version, then changing the packaging design.
• Omitting the priority claim at filing, when you cannot add it later.
• Letting the thirty-day correction notice run out.
• Missing the fifteen-day review window after a refusal.
• Forgetting to record a change of name, which blocks renewal years later.

None of these is exotic. Each one appears in files we review every month, and each one costs time that no amount of money buys back. The remedy is procedural discipline, not legal argument.

12. What this means for your filing

The procedure is predictable. What varies is preparation. Four steps cover it.

First, confirm the mark is registrable before you spend anything on filing, using the grounds set out in the companion article. Second, draft the goods list by Chinese subclass, not by translating your home specification. Third, appoint an agent who will answer a refusal, and keep the power of attorney valid for the whole term. Finally, diarise the two hard deadlines: thirty days for corrections, fifteen days for review.

If you are still deciding between the Madrid route and a direct national filing, the comparison of the two routes sets out the trade-offs. If you need to know what the revised law changes for existing registrations, the 2026 revision summary covers it. Either way, file early: the register held 53 million live marks at the end of 2025.

Frequently asked questions