China Trademarks: Do You Feel Lucky? Do You?
Our advice to companies doing business with China has remained essentially unchanged since we first published this post in 2007:
Register your trademarks in China before you manufacture there, sell there, exhibit at a trade show, or disclose your brand to potential Chinese partners.
China is a first-to-file trademark jurisdiction. This means that, in most cases, the first qualified applicant to file for a mark obtains the rights to it for the goods or services covered by the registration. It usually does not matter that another company created the brand, registered it elsewhere, or has used it outside China for years.
There are exceptions for bad-faith filings, prior rights, applications by business partners or agents, and well-known trademarks. But an exception is not a trademark strategy. Proving that someone else should not own your mark will virtually always be slower, more expensive, and less certain than simply filing first.
Do Not Count on Being Famous
Companies sometimes assume their brand is famous enough to receive protection in China without registration. Unless your company is Coca-Cola-level famous, this is a bad bet.
Well-known trademark protection is not a blanket shield covering every name, logo, symbol, and product associated with a company. The owner generally must prove that the particular mark at issue qualified for protection in China at the relevant time and for the relevant goods or services because it was widely known among the relevant Chinese public.
Ferrari learned this the hard way.
Ferrari and the Prancing Horse
In 1995, White Clouds Sports Merchandise applied to register a horse design for clothing in China. Ferrari opposed the application, arguing that the design conflicted with its famous prancing-horse logo.
The Chinese Trademark Office rejected Ferrari’s opposition. Ferrari appealed, arguing that both its name-and-horse mark and the horse standing alone were well-known trademarks in China. After more than a decade of administrative proceedings and litigation, Ferrari lost.
The court concluded that Ferrari had not submitted sufficient evidence showing that the standalone horse design qualified for well-known trademark protection in China under the circumstances of the case. The fame of the Ferrari name did not automatically establish that every related logo and variation was equally well-known. Nor could Ferrari combine the reputation of several different brand elements to obtain protection for the horse image standing alone.
Ferrari did not lose every right to use its horse logo in China, as this case is sometimes described. It lost its attempt to stop this particular clothing registration by relying on well-known trademark protection for the standalone horse design.
That more precise description does not weaken the lesson. It strengthens it. Ferrari spent more than ten years fighting for protection it could have pursued far more easily by filing the right trademark applications at the outset.
Manufacturing in China Is Enough to Put Your Brand at Risk
You should not assume you can ignore Chinese trademark registration because you manufacture in China only for export.
If your brand appears on products, labels, packaging, instruction manuals, hangtags, or shipping cartons in China, it is exposed. A trademark squatter, competitor, distributor, former employee, or even a factory may try to register it.
Once someone else secures the registration, that party may use it to interfere with your production, pressure your manufacturer, complicate a factory change, or ask Chinese Customs to stop your goods from leaving China.
Companies that manufacture in China without selling there usually do not need an enormous Chinese trademark portfolio. They do need a focused defensive strategy that protects the marks appearing on their products and packaging. We discuss that distinction in Manufacturing in China but Not Selling There? Your China Trademark Strategy Should Be Defensive, Focused, and Fast.
Register the Right Marks
Registering your company name alone may not be enough. Depending on how you use your branding, you may need separate applications for your word mark, logo, product names, and Chinese-language brand.
You also must cover the correct goods and services. China divides the international trademark classes into subclasses and often treats each subclass as a separate category. A registration that looks broad to a U.S. or European company may leave major gaps in China. For more on this, see China Trademarks: Subclasses and Basic Numbers.
A good China trademark strategy is not necessarily the one with the most applications. It is the one that protects the marks and product categories most important to the company’s business, manufacturing, and supply chain.
China’s Trademark Laws Have Improved, but the Advice Has Not Changed
China has become more willing to reject and invalidate certain bad-faith applications, particularly those involving obvious copying, trademark hoarding, or applicants with a prior relationship to the legitimate brand owner. China’s revised Trademark Law, adopted in June 2026 and effective January 1, 2027, strengthens its restrictions on malicious and excessive filings.
Those changes are welcome, but they do not make early registration less important. A company challenging a bad-faith filing still may need to investigate the applicant, reconstruct old communications, prove prior use or reputation, gather evidence from China, and pursue an opposition, invalidation, cancellation, or lawsuit.
A better remedy after someone takes your trademark is still not nearly as good, fast, or inexpensive as preventing that person from taking it.
If you discover a conflicting application before it registers, you may have only three months after publication to oppose it. Our Guide to China Trademark Oppositions explains what to do and why acting quickly matters.
What Companies Should Do
File before you show your brand to factories, distributors, sourcing agents, trade-show attendees, or prospective Chinese partners. Protect the marks as they are actually used, including separate word marks and logos when appropriate. Cover the right classes and subclasses, and consider whether you need an official Chinese-language name.
Registration is also the foundation for enforcement. Once your mark is registered, you can consider recording it with China Customs to help stop counterfeit goods from leaving the country. See Reduce Your Counterfeit Risks by Registering Your China Trademark with China Customs for more on that process.
The practical lesson has survived nearly twenty years of changes to China’s trademark system:
Register first. Fight later only if you have no other choice.
Or, as my friend Dan Hull put it so long ago on his always-entertaining What About Clients? blog:
