In 2020, the average number of monthly trademark applications in China reached 775,000. It is expected that the figure has exceeded 800,000 in 2021. With the increase in the number of trademark applications, non-use cancellation actions (NUCs) have also soared. A NUC is an administrative procedure that can be taken by any entity or individual when a registered trademark has not been put in use for three consecutive years without a justifiable reason. NUCs are generally adopted by applicants as a means to overcome the cited marks that block their own trademark applications.

After a NUC is filed, the China Trademark Office (CTMO) will notify the trademark registrant and require that evidence of use for the past three years be submitted within two months. Before 2022, the examination of the evidence of use was quite lax. For a trademark registered in several subclasses, the registrant only needs to submit evidence of use for one subclass or two to maintain the trademark registration in all the subclasses it covers. Under such circumstances, if the petitioner of the NUC wants to get the registration canceled in other subclasses, he will have to lodge an appeal before the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB). The TRAB will carefully review the evidence of use and match it against all the subclasses, and cancel the trademark registration on those subclasses for which the registrant fails to provide evidence of use. This explains why 70–90% of trademark registrations are canceled in appeals before the TRAB. In fact, they should have been canceled by the CTMO if the CTMO reviews the evidence of use in a stricter manner.

CTMO Refines Examination of Non-use Cancellation Actions查看全文 »

Shanghai Chumeng Education Technology Co., Ltd. (Applicant) sought to register “初心” No. 44867663 for use on services in class 45 and the China Trademark Office (CTMO) refused the application on the grounds of likelihood of confusion and ill effects. The Applicant appealed and submitted letter of consent by the registrants of the cited marks. The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB) recognized the letter of consent as a justification for the co-existence of the applied-for mark and the cited marks, while affirmed the refusal on the grounds of ill effects.

“初心” means “original intention” or “original aspiration” and was a phrase that first appeared in a work of Bai Juyi, a renowned poet of the Tang Dynasty (618–907). The original meaning of this phrase was neutral, and I do not see any reason that it should be deemed to have ill effects. However, this phrase has been frequently quoted by President Xi as of October 31, 2017, when he delivered a speech after a visit at Nanhu Lake Revolution Museum in Jiaxing, east China’s Zhejiang Province. After that, “stay[ing] true to our original aspiration and founding mission” has been quoted in several other speeches of Xi and become a very well-known phrase in the political context. …

TRAB Affirms Refusal to Register “初心”: Ill Effects查看全文 »