Improve your China trademark portfolio

The China IP environment has evolved tremendously over the last decades with the Chinese trademark protection and litigation landscape gaining in sophistication and predictability, for the better.

To fully benefit from these positive changes, foreign companies must adapt their Chinese trademark portfolio strategies.

As a starting point, two easy and cost effective steps can be taken to significantly improve your IP position on the Chinese market.

1. Obtain a China Trademark Office registration certificate for all your international registrations designating China.
This certificate is a.o. required to open an online-shop on important Chinese e-commerce platforms or to enforce your trademarks on the Chinese market.
As it takes 2 to 4 months to obtain these certificates, you should order them proactively and avoid to waste precious time when you will have to enforce or exploit your trademarks in China.

2. Record the copyright on your logos with the China Copyright Bureau.
Such recordation is quick and cheap and will help you:

• Fight against trademark hijacking, a practice that remains prevalent in China. Indeed, the Chinese TM Office increasingly favors right holders that oppose hijacked trademarks based on copyright recordation.
• Increase your scope of protection since through a single recordation you can oppose figurative trademark registrations in all classes.

Contact us for more information.