What do I need to maintain my trademark in China?

Contact Mr. Ma Jun's email majun@100ybf.com, Mr. Ma Jun is a professional trademark consultant, he is founder of 100IPservice, who files more than 6000 trademarks per year with high success rate.

You may have the question whether there are hidden fees for Chinese trademark, actually we can enumerate potential items you will have to consider after having a Chinese trademark:

Keep evidences of use and use AS IS

Although it is not required to submit evidence of use at the time of application of the trademark, Chinese trademark law does have the core principle that trademark is registered for use. So if you do not use your trademark for 3 consecutive years, anyone, including a foreigner may submit cancellation against your trademark. One point you may ignore is, you will have to use the trademark AS IS (if the difference is only the font from Times New Roman to Calibri, it will generally be OK). So point one is to keep evidence of use of the trademark and use the trademark AS IS. Any invoice, contract, advertisement, tag on the product would be viewed as evidence of use, make sure the use will go beyond the minimum threshold of use (not a created evidence but rather real use evidence).

For foreigners, it is also important to watch the CTMO gazette from time to time because you may not be able to receive the notice of cancellation.

If you do not use the trademark, I would recommend you to reapply the trademark every 3 years.

Timely change your name and address if there is any change thereof

Chinese trademark law prescribes if the name of applicant and address of applicant has been changed. Untimely change of the trademarks will trigger cancel of the trademark after first round of warning (note without the right address you may not receive the notice).

Watch the public gazette of the CTMO database

This is especially important for companies who want to protect their trademark carefully. Your trademark may be mocked in a certain way, i.e. adding an alphabetic factor may create difference between your trademark and the new trademark, but may harm your business interests, in this case, you need watch closely the gazette to initiate opposition timely.