Roughly 8–12 months from filing to registration.
CNY 270 per class e-filed, covering up to 10 goods; small surcharge per extra item.
10 years from registration, renewable indefinitely in 10-year blocks.
A mark unused for 3 consecutive years is open to cancellation by anyone.
Send us the mark, the market, and any deadline. We will route it to the right practice lead within one business day.
Contact UsA Chinese national application moves through four stages. Formality examination, usually about one month, checks documents and classification. Substantive examination, in current practice typically four to six months, is where the examiner searches conflicts and applies absolute grounds. If the mark passes, it is published for a three-month opposition period. If no opposition is filed, the registration issues and the certificate follows shortly after.
Add the stages together and a smooth case runs roughly eight to twelve months from filing to registration — fast by international standards. A partial or full refusal, or an opposition, adds its own track and can extend the process by a year or more.
Official fees are modest: currently CNY 270 per class for an e-filed application covering up to ten goods or services, with a small surcharge for each additional item. Professional fees for clearance, subclass strategy, filing, and monitoring vary with scope, but for most brands the total cost of protecting a core mark in the classes that matter is a rounding error next to a single dispute.
The expensive part of Chinese trademark practice is never the filing. It is the recovery: buying back or invalidating a squatted mark, rebranding for one market, or losing a platform store during peak season.
A Chinese registration is valid for ten years from the registration date and renewable indefinitely. Renewal can be filed in the twelve months before expiry, with a six-month grace period after — at a higher cost and with the mark exposed in the gap.
Two other clocks run quietly. First, non-use: once a mark has been registered for three years, anyone may request cancellation for three consecutive years of non-use, and the burden of proving use falls on you — keep dated evidence of real Chinese sales, packaging, and marketing. Second, changes: assignments, name or address changes, and license recordals should be filed promptly, because an out-of-date register entry is a common reason platform complaints and customs actions stall.
Plan the filing program around subclasses and realistic expansion rather than filing everything everywhere. Reserve budget for a watch service and for one round of office-action response — partial refusals citing prior marks are routine in China and are often overcome or carved around. If you are choosing between spending on breadth now or disputes later, breadth wins almost every time.
This article is general information about Chinese IP practice, not legal advice for a specific matter. Rules, fees, and timelines change; confirm current requirements before acting. For advice on your situation, contact our team.