China Trademark Subclasses: Why the Right Class Is Not Enough
Our China trademark lawyers regularly hear from companies that registered their China trademark in the correct Nice class and assume they are fully protected. Sometimes they are. Sometimes the registration covers products the company barely cares about while leaving its main product exposed. The reason is China's subclass system, which splits each class into smaller groups that often determine the practical scope of a registration. To protect the right products in China, you need to get the class, subclass, and goods descriptions right.
Nice Classes and Basic Numbers
The Nice Classification is the international system for organizing goods and services for trademark registration. Established under the 1957 Nice Agreement and administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), it divides goods and services into 45 classes, with Classes 1 through 34 covering goods and Classes 35 through 45 covering services. China, the United States, the European Union, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and most other major trademark jurisdictions use it. That shared structure makes international filing easier, since a company's trademark lawyer does not need to determine from scratch in each country where software, furniture, or cosmetics belong.
Each class lists specific goods or services, and WIPO gives each listed item a six-digit Basic Number that begins with its class number. Class 15, for example, covers musical instruments, and within it accordions are 150001, pianos are 150008, and tuning forks are 150033. A common classification system does not make national trademark systems identical.
How China Divides Classes into Subclasses
China sorts the goods and services within each Nice class into similarity groups, which English-language discussions of China trademark law usually call subclasses. China's trademark office, CNIPA, publishes these groups in its Classification Table of Similar Goods and Services. Class 15 is a simple illustration. China divides it primarily between subclass 1501, covering musical instruments, and subclass 1502, covering many instrument accessories and parts, so pianos and accordions fall in 1501 while tuning forks fall in 1502. The Basic Number identifies the specific good, and the subclass identifies the group in which China places it.
Those groups matter because CNIPA generally treats goods in the same similarity group as similar when examining applications and goods in different groups as dissimilar. Two products can sit in the same Nice class and still land in different Chinese subclasses, and when they do, the same or a similar trademark can sometimes coexist on both. Saying "we need our trademark registered in Class 9" therefore does not tell you what protection you actually need. That depends on which Class 9 goods your company needs to protect and which Chinese similarity groups cover them.
Class 9 Shows How Complicated This Gets
Class 9 is far messier than Class 15. It covers computer hardware and software, telecommunications equipment, scientific and measuring instruments, optical goods, batteries, safety equipment, and much more, and China spreads those products across numerous similarity groups. A software company, a battery manufacturer, an eyewear company, and a seller of protective safety equipment may all need Class 9 registrations, each with very different coverage within the class.
Class 9 also includes products many companies would never expect to find there. One company we worked with had registered its trademark in China for gloves in Class 25, which covers gloves worn as clothing. The company sold protective work gloves, which belong in Class 9. A competitor later obtained the registration covering those protective gloves and used it against the company's shipments. The company had a China trademark registration, but not for the product it actually sold. We tell the full story in China Trademark Registration: Why U.S. Companies Need More Than a Filing Agent.
Subclasses Matter, but They Do Not End the Analysis
It is tempting to assume that goods in the same subclass are always similar and goods in different subclasses never are, but Chinese trademark law does not work that mechanically. When determining whether goods are similar, Chinese trademark authorities and courts can look at factors such as function, purpose, customers, and sales channels, rather than treating the Classification Table as conclusive. The table itself also contains cross-references, qualifications, and exceptions that mean you cannot safely select coverage based on subclass numbers alone.
What This Means for Your China Trademark Application
Filing a China trademark application is usually straightforward. The harder work comes before filing, and it starts with your business. That means knowing what you sell now, what you expect to sell next, and what you most need to keep others from selling under your mark or anything close to it. Only then can your lawyer build the application around the right marks, classes, goods, and similarity groups.
That work happens in two languages. You describe your products in English, but a China trademark application is filed in Chinese, and its goods descriptions are judged against a Classification Table written in Chinese. The line between gloves worn as clothing and gloves that protect against injury is drawn in Chinese wording, and so are most of the distinctions that determine what a China registration covers. A lawyer who cannot independently evaluate the Chinese wording must rely on someone else's interpretation of precisely those distinctions. This is why someone handling the substantive trademark analysis needs to understand both the client's English-language business description and the Chinese-language classification terminology. This is also why choosing a filing service on price alone can cost far more than it saves. A perfectly filed application covering the wrong goods protects the wrong products.
Direct China Filing Versus Madrid
China's subclass system is one reason we generally prefer a direct China application over a Madrid designation when China is an important market or manufacturing location. A direct application lets us choose the goods and services with China's similarity groups in mind from the start. With a Madrid designation, an international specification written in English, French, or Spanish has to be interpreted within China's Chinese-language classification system, which creates one more opportunity for the resulting protection to come out broader or narrower than intended.
Filing directly in China also does not necessarily mean giving up the priority date of an earlier foreign application. If the filing qualifies for priority under the Paris Convention, a China application filed within six months can claim the earlier filing date. Madrid makes sense for companies seeking protection in many countries at once, and those companies can still file directly in China. We discuss the tradeoffs in more detail in The Madrid System for Trademarks: Powerful, But Not Always the Right Tool.
Do Not Wait to File in China
Companies that manufacture in China should file early. China is a first-to-file country, and waiting until your manufacturer, a distributor, or a competitor learns of your brand can turn a simple application into a costly fight. That risk is the subject of Manufacturing in China? Register Your Trademark Before Someone Else Does. And when you file, make sure the application covers the products you actually sell.
