The China Trademark Office: What CNIPA Is and How It Works

The office that decides every document in your case

Every trademark application in China is examined, approved, refused, published and registered by one government body: the China National Intellectual Property Administration, usually shortened to CNIPA. If you are filing a Chinese trademark, CNIPA is the examiner, the decision-maker and the registrar. Knowing what it is — and how it got its current name — explains a lot of confusion in older documents, older articles and older advice.

A short history of the name

The current structure is younger than it looks, and the renaming matters when you read anything about Chinese trademarks.

Before 2018, trademarks and patents lived in separate ministries. Trademarks were handled by the China Trademark Office — the CTMO — inside the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). Patents were handled by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). Two agencies, two systems, two enforcement teams, and a well-documented tangle of jurisdictional conflicts between them.

In March 2018, a government-wide restructuring merged the intellectual property functions. SIPO's successor took over trademark registration from SAIC, along with geographical indications. From 28 August 2018 its English name became the China National Intellectual Property Administration — CNIPA.

In April 2019, the internal bodies formally merged: the CTMO, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB) and the trademark examination cooperation centres were absorbed into CNIPA, and their old names were retired. In 2023 the organisation was elevated to report directly to the State Council.

This history explains why documents disagree with each other. A certificate, gazette entry or article referring to the CTMO or TRAB predates the merger; anything issued today comes from CNIPA itself. They are the same lineage — older guides that say "file with the CTMO" are describing the office that is now CNIPA.

What CNIPA actually handles

CNIPA covers trademarks, patents, layout designs of integrated circuits and geographical indications. Copyright is separate — it remains with the National Copyright Administration. Enforcement against infringing goods on the ground is handled locally by the market regulation authorities (AMR), not by CNIPA itself.

For trademark purposes, CNIPA does five things:

Receives and examines applications — formal examination first, then substantive examination for distinctiveness and conflicts with earlier marks
Publishes approved marks — the preliminary approval gazette opens the opposition window
Registers marks and issues certificates — the register is the source of rights in a first-to-file system
Decides review cases — refusals, oppositions, invalidations and cancellations
Runs the register and the public search database

What examination looks like on the inside

The workflow your application passes through is fixed:

Formal examination (roughly a month) checks completeness: applicant details, the mark itself, the specification, agency qualification, fee payment. Defects here produce a correction notice with a thirty-day deadline — a formality issue, not a refusal.

Substantive examination reviews distinctiveness, absolute grounds and conflicts with prior marks. The statutory limit is nine months; the current average is about four. This is where most refusals happen, and where the quality of your pre-filing search shows.

Publication opens a three-month opposition window — shrinking to two months from January 2027 under the amended law, which is one more reason to monitor rather than wait.

Registration follows if no opposition succeeds. The certificate issues, and protection runs ten years from registration, renewable.

The scale is worth internalising. CNIPA registered over four million trademarks in 2025 alone, and the register holds well over forty million live marks. Substantive examination against a database that size is why a proper pre-filing search — not just an exact-match query — is the difference between filing into open space and filing into a wall.

Why you cannot file with CNIPA yourself

A foreign applicant without a habitual residence or place of business in China must file through a Chinese trademark agency. This is Article 18 of the Trademark Law, not a policy preference. CNIPA conducts its business in Chinese, and correspondence, corrections and review proceedings all run through a domestic address.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the agency you choose is the whole process — worth selecting carefully for exactly that reason. Second, anything you read telling you to "just file with the CTMO directly" was not written for foreign applicants.

CNIPA does maintain an official English site and the public trademark search database supports English queries, so you can look things up yourself. But looking up is different from filing — the searchable database also has a publishing lag of several weeks to months, and recent applications may not appear yet.

What CNIPA is not

Three misconceptions are worth clearing up, because they cost foreign applicants money.

It is not a watchdog. CNIPA registers rights; it does not police the market for you. Catching a conflicting application inside the opposition window, or an infringing product on a marketplace, is your job or your agent's — through monitoring, not through the register.

It does not verify agency claims. Scam emails claiming to come from "the China Trademark Office" demanding urgent fees are a known nuisance aimed at foreign registrants. Official fees are fixed and public, genuine correspondence runs through your agent of record, and unsolicited invoices from unknown parties can be checked against the schedule in minutes.

It does not connect your English and Chinese marks. A registration for your Latin wordmark does not automatically cover the Chinese characters consumers actually use. The register treats them as separate signs; the link exists only if you register it.

Frequently asked questions

What does CNIPA stand for?

China National Intellectual Property Administration — the government body that examines and registers trademarks, patents, layout designs and geographical indications in China. It has held the trademark portfolio since the 2018 restructuring, before which trademarks were handled by the CTMO under a different ministry.

Is the CTMO still the trademark office in China?

The CTMO's functions were merged into CNIPA in 2019 and the name was retired. Older certificates and articles referring to the CTMO describe the same office that now operates as CNIPA, so the terms overlap in older material, but current filings are all handled by CNIPA.

Where can I search Chinese trademarks officially?

CNIPA operates the official trademark search database through the China Trademark Network. It supports English queries, but the interface and all legal proceedings are in Chinese, and the database has a publishing lag, so recently filed applications may not appear yet.

How long does CNIPA take to examine a trademark application?

The statutory limit for substantive examination is nine months. The current average is around four months, followed by a publication window for oppositions — three months now, two months from January 2027. From filing to certificate, plan for twelve to eighteen months in total.

Can a foreign company file a trademark directly with CNIPA?

No. A foreign applicant without a habitual residence or place of business in China must file through a Chinese trademark agency under Article 18 of the Trademark Law. All proceedings are conducted in Chinese through the agency of record.

Does CNIPA enforce trademarks against infringers?

CNIPA registers and adjudicates rights. Enforcement against infringing goods is handled locally by the market regulation authorities, and infringement litigation goes to the courts. Monitoring for conflicts and infringement is the rights holder's own responsibility.

Are emails from the China Trademark Office asking for fees genuine?

Treat unsolicited fee demands with suspicion. Official fees are fixed and published, and genuine procedural correspondence reaches you through your trademark agent of record. Any unexpected invoice can be checked against the official fee schedule in minutes.