What if my trademark is maliciously registered 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.

Editor's Note: As to foreigners, I would suggest to register core trademarks as early as possible if you want to enter the Chinese market.

One of my clients consulted that his trademark has been challenged by a foreign company. The counterpart is famous in the industry, but has not yet entered China.

I suggested my client not to be worried about the invalidation procedure because in this situation the challenger has to prove that my client registered the trademark in a malicious manner or the challenger’s trademark is already a well-known trademark in China.

It will be pretty hard for the challenger to prepare evidences without business existence in China – how could a registration be malicious without even business existence of the challenger in China. And prove of well-known trademark is even harder, CTMO requires the challenger to provide evidence of sells channels, advertisements, honors etc., which may amount to hundreds of pages of evidences, if not thousands pages.

Actually one of the famous cases in China is the Hyundai case. Back to the year 2004, Hyundai has to grant the owner as exclusive channel in China’s Zhejiang province for the trademark, which is registered in 1996, when Hyundai still had no substantial existence in China.

In 2019, also one of my clients told me he sold a trademark on class 7 to a Taiwan company after two years of invalidation battle for a good reward.