Trademark registration in China: the marketing step brands do too late
Short version: China is first-to-file, so the trademark belongs to whoever registers it at CNIPA first — not to whoever has used the name for twenty years in forty other countries. Marketers treat trademark filing as a legal chore for later. It isn't. It's the first marketing decision you make in China, because the moment you start generating buzz — a Chinese name, a Red account, a wave of seeding posts — you've painted a target on a name you may not own yet. File before you market, or budget for the ransom.
I've watched more than one brand walk into China with a launch deck, a media plan, and a KOL roster — and no trademark. They found out the hard way that someone had already registered their name, sometimes their Chinese name too, and was politely offering to sell it back. This is the least glamorous slide in the market-entry deck and the one most likely to blow up the whole plan. So let me make the case for why it belongs to the marketing team, not just the lawyers, and when to actually do it.
Why this is a marketing problem, not just a legal one
The reflex is to file it under "IP" and hand it to counsel a quarter before launch. But look at what actually tips off a squatter: a distributor you pitched, a factory that made your samples, a trade-show booth, a press mention, the first influencers who post about you. Every one of those is a marketing activity. Your go-to-market motion is the thing that broadcasts "this brand is coming to China and doesn't own its name yet." You are generating the demand signal that makes squatting worth the squatter's while.
China runs on a first-to-file system. Rights go to whoever files first at the China National Intellectual Property Administration, largely regardless of how long or how well you've used the name elsewhere. There's no meaningful "we used it first overseas" defense for an ordinary mark. Prior use abroad buys you almost nothing unless you can clear the very high bar of a "well-known mark" — and if you're entering China, you're by definition not well-known there yet. So the practical rule is brutal and simple: in China, you don't own your name until you've registered it in China.
The Chinese name is a separate mark — and the one brands forget
Here's the part that catches even careful companies. Registering your Latin-alphabet logo does not protect your Chinese name. They're treated as separate marks. If consumers, media, and platforms are going to call you 星巴克 rather than "Starbucks," then 星巴克 is the asset that matters — and if you haven't registered it, a squatter (or an over-eager distributor) can. Worse, the market will often choose a Chinese name for you if you don't choose one first: a nickname that trends on Red or Douyin becomes your de facto brand, and whoever registers it owns the name your customers actually search.
This is exactly why naming and trademark can't be sequential. You pick the Chinese name as a branding decision (I've written about how to choose a Chinese brand name without stepping on a landmine), and you file it as a legal one — at the same time, before either becomes public. Same for your transliteration, your key product names, and any handle you plan to build an audience on.
What to file, and in which classes
China uses the Nice classification but subdivides classes into subclasses, and protection is frustratingly narrow — a registration in one subclass may not stop someone in the next one over. That makes coverage a strategy question, not a checkbox. At minimum, think in these terms:
| What to register | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Latin-alphabet name / logo | Your core mark, but it does not cover the Chinese version |
| Chinese name (characters) | The name customers actually type and say — a separate, essential registration |
| Pinyin / transliteration | Blocks lookalike filings that trade on how your name sounds |
| Your product classes | File in the subclasses your goods actually sit in — don't assume one covers the category |
| Class 35 (retail / advertising) | Often needed to run stores, e-commerce, and promotion under your name |
| Adjacent "defensive" classes | Reasonable coverage where a squatter would plausibly park your name |
One caution: "defensive" filing has limits. China has been cracking down on stockpiling — registering hundreds of marks with no intent to use — so blanket-filing across all 45 classes is both expensive and increasingly disfavored. File in reasonable, defensible scope around what you'll genuinely do. Spend the budget on the marks that map to your real business, not on a hoard.
The system is tightening — in ways that cut both directions
The rules are moving. China adopted a revised Trademark Law in June 2026 that takes effect on January 1, 2027, continuing a multi-year push against bad-faith filings. Enforcement is already real: authorities have logged well over 200,000 actions against bad-faith applications in recent half-year periods, and malicious applicants can now face administrative fines up to RMB 100,000. Arguing "this was filed in bad faith" is genuinely easier than it was five years ago.
But don't read that as "the state will protect me, so I can relax." The same tightening has raised the evidentiary bar on the other side. Since early 2025, non-use cancellation — the classic tool for clawing back a squatted mark that was never actually used — has gotten harder, with heavier proof requirements on the party trying to reclaim the name. Translation: the system is better at punishing squatters and also slower and costlier as a place to fight. Which means the winning move is still the boring one — file first, so you never have to litigate at all.
When to do it (the answer is earlier than you think)
File before you make the name public in any China-facing way. Concretely, the trademark application should go in before you:
- pitch distributors, agents, or Tmall Partners who now know your plans;
- send production to a Chinese factory;
- open a Red, Douyin, or WeChat account under the name;
- run any KOC or KOL seeding, or issue China press;
- show the name at a China-facing trade show.
Registration takes the better part of a year to fully grant, but your priority date is set when you file — so the goal isn't a certificate in hand before launch, it's a filed application before you generate the first public signal. If you're building a first-quarter plan for the market, the trademark filing sits at the very front of it, alongside naming — not somewhere in the legal appendix. (I lay out that sequencing in the 90-day China entry plan.)
Bottom line
Trademark registration reads like a legal footnote, but in a first-to-file market it's the load-bearing marketing decision — because marketing is precisely what tells the world your name is up for grabs. Register the Latin name and the Chinese name, in the classes you'll actually use, before you pitch a partner or post a single seeding note. The brands that do it early spend a modest fee. The ones that do it late pay a ransom, relaunch under a compromised name, or quietly delay China by a year — tuition nobody needs to pay.
If you're scoping a Greater China or Southeast Asia entry and want a second read on the naming-and-filing sequence before it's public, that's the work I do — reach out.