Keeping a China Trademark Alive: Ongoing Duties

Introduction: the certificate is not the finish line

Most foreign brand owners think of a China trademark as a filing problem. Get the class right, get the translation right, wait fourteen months, receive the certificate. Then the file is closed and everyone moves on.

That framing is wrong, and it is expensive. A China registration is not a document you own. It is a position you have to hold for ten years, and the rules that govern that ten-year period are written for parties who are inside the country. If you are outside it, every one of those rules becomes an obligation that only you can trip over — because nobody in China is watching your file on your behalf unless you have arranged and maintained that arrangement.

This article is about the ten years after the certificate. It assumes you have already registered, or are about to.

The structural problem: you are not addressable

Chinese trademark procedure assumes that any official document the office needs to send will reach the applicant. Notices of provisional refusal, requests for correction, opposition papers, invalidation petitions, notification of non-use cancellation — all of these are dispatched to an address on record, and deadlines run from dispatch.

For a Chinese company, this is trivial. The address is real, staff are there, mail is opened.

For a foreign company, it is not. CNIPA does not serve foreign addresses. This is why the application form requires you to name a domestic document recipient — a party physically located in mainland China who agrees to accept service of legal documents on your behalf for the life of the case.

That single field is the hinge on which everything else turns. Almost every disaster story about a foreign brand losing a China trademark without warning traces back to it: a recipient that moved, a recipient that was a subsidiary since wound up, a recipient that received the papers and did not understand they were time-critical.

Who is usually named as recipient

Your Chinese trademark agency, in the overwhelming majority of filings.
A mainland subsidiary, branch or affiliate, if one genuinely exists and has staff who will act.
A related mainland entity you do not control — a distributor, a joint-venture partner — which is a mistake, for reasons set out below.

If you name your agent, the agent's continued existence and continued engagement become load-bearing. If you name a subsidiary, the subsidiary's continued existence and continued attention become load-bearing. Either way, the duty to keep that link alive is yours, and it does not appear on any official checklist.

When the recipient changes, the office must be told

A change of domestic recipient is a recordable change. If your agency relationship ends — you switch firms, the firm closes, the relationship sours — and you do not record a new recipient, you have not merely made your own life harder. You have created a situation in which the office believes service is being effected correctly while nothing is actually reaching anyone.

The clock still runs. A refusal notice dispatched to an address that no longer functions is legally delivered, whether or not a human read it.

This is the mechanism behind the most commonly reported horror story in Chinese trademark practice, and it is worth stating plainly: the office is not required to hunt you down. It has your recipient on file. If that recipient is a dead end, the deadline expires and you lose the position.

The traps that catch foreign owners specifically

A mainland subsidiary is not a permanent solution

Companies frequently name a local subsidiary as recipient on the reasoning that it is the entity closest to the brand. This works until the subsidiary is wound up, relocated, renamed, or simply reorganised in a way that moves the relevant person.

A subsidiary is a business entity with its own life cycle. A trademark registration runs for ten years and is renewable indefinitely. Whoever you name as recipient needs to be able to serve that entire horizon, or you need a standing process for noticing when they cannot.

Agency firms are not immune either. Small practices close. Partners leave. A firm that takes your filing and then stops actively handling your portfolio has effectively become an unmonitored mailbox.

The Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan wrinkle

Foreignness under Chinese trademark law is not about distant geography. Applicants from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan without a genuine mainland place of business are treated as foreign applicants and must act through a mainland trademark agency.

A wholly owned mainland subsidiary of a Hong Kong company, however, is a mainland entity and can file in its own name if it holds the rights. The distinction is where the applicant's real operating presence sits — not where the parent is incorporated.

This matters for group structures. If your Chinese trademark was filed by the Hong Kong holding company rather than the mainland operating company, you have a foreign applicant with all the obligations that follow, and no mainland staff whose job it is to notice the obligations.

Mandatory agency is permanent, not just for filing

Article 18 of the Trademark Law requires foreigners and foreign enterprises without a habitual residence or place of business in China to entrust a trademark agency established in China. Many owners read this as a filing formality and assume that once registered, they can handle matters themselves.

They cannot. The requirement covers all trademark matters, not only the original application. A foreign owner who wants to renew, assign, record a licence, respond to a non-use cancellation, or oppose a later conflicting application must do so through a Chinese agency. There is no self-service path.

The practical consequence: a foreign owner is never not represented. If your engagement with your agent lapses, you have not become independent — you have simply become unrepresented while remaining legally obliged to be represented. Deadlines keep arriving.

Correspondence that looks official but is not

Because foreign owners are structurally dependent on their recorded representatives, they are also structurally vulnerable to solicitations that impersonate official correspondence.

The pattern is consistent: an email or letter quoting your application or registration number, warning of an imminent deadline, and requesting a fee. The number is usually genuine — it is public — but the sender has no relationship with CNIPA. Chinese official fees are set by published tariff and are collected through the office or, in the case of agency filings, through your agent. Diverting a payment to an account named in an unsolicited email is never part of legitimate procedure.

The defence is procedural rather than technical: route all correspondence bearing your mark's name through the agent who is actually on record, and treat anything arriving by a path you did not establish as an approach to be verified, not an instruction to be followed.

Address changes and name changes are records the office must maintain

When your company moves or changes its legal name, the trademark register does not update itself. A change of applicant name or address is a registrable change requiring a filing.

Leave it undone and the mismatch creates problems at exactly the wrong moment. A renewal filed under a name that does not match the record requires correction first. An assignment is blocked by an inconsistency that has been sitting in the file for four years. Enforcement becomes harder to assert when your own documentation does not line up with the register.

The fee for a change is trivial — online, the official change fee is zero, against 150 yuan for the paper route. The cost of leaving it undone is measured in delays at moments you cannot afford them.

Name changes carry an additional trap for foreign owners: the new name has to be rendered in Chinese consistently with the name already on the register, which is a translation problem before it is a filing problem.

Use evidence is not a formality you handle at renewal

A China registration can be attacked for non-use. If the mark has not been used in connection with the designated goods or services in mainland China for a continuous three-year period, a third party may apply to cancel it.

The attack is noticed only when it arrives, and by then the evidence you can produce is whatever you can reconstruct after the fact — which is generally much less than what you would have had if you had been collecting as you went.

What counts, and what does not, deserves its own treatment, but the operational point for a foreign owner is this: evidence of use in China accumulates or it does not. Distributor invoices, import records, advertising bearing the mark, packaging as sold, e-commerce listings, customs declarations — these exist in your supply chain whether or not anyone is filing them against a trademark registration number. Retrieving them two years later, from a distributor who has since changed systems, is where cancellations get lost.

Build the file while there is nothing at stake. A folder per registration, updated annually, is the entire discipline.

The Madrid route does not exempt you, and adds one risk

Designating China through the Madrid System changes the filing route. It does not change what happens afterwards.

A Madrid designation of China still requires a Chinese agency for any subsequent proceeding — refusals, oppositions, cancellations, renewals. The representation obligation follows the mark, not the route.

Madrid adds a structural risk that direct filings do not carry: for five years after the international registration date, the designation depends on the basic application or registration in your home office. If that basic right is cancelled, limited or withdrawn — including as a result of a successful attack by a third party in your home jurisdiction — the protection in China can fall with it. This is the central attack mechanism.

The window is five years and it cannot be closed from the China side. It can only be mitigated, most commonly by filing directly in China in parallel so that a separate, independent registration exists. That mitigation costs money, which is precisely why the decision has to be made at filing rather than discovered at year three.

Renewal is a window, not a date

A China registration runs for ten years from the date of registration. Renewal may be applied for within the twelve months preceding expiry. A six-month grace period follows expiry, on payment of a late fee.

Miss both, and the registration is removed. There is no discretionary restoration.

Official fees are modest — 450 yuan electronically, 500 yuan on paper, with the late fee at 225 yuan electronically or 250 yuan on paper, as set out in our renewal guide. The number is not the risk. The risk is the calendar, and the fact that the party responsible for the calendar is outside the jurisdiction.

More consequential than the fee: renewal does not examine the mark again, and it does not repair a registration that was never actually protecting what you sell. Renewing a mark registered in the wrong class simply extends a position you did not want.

What a foreign owner should actually maintain

Reduced to practice, the ongoing duties fall into a short list, none of which is technically difficult, and all of which fail silently when neglected.

A living domestic recipient. A named party in mainland China who will receive official documents and reach a human who understands deadlines. Reviewed whenever your corporate structure or advisory relationships change.
A current address and name on the register. Changed at the office when they change in reality, not at the next renewal.
A standing agency relationship. Because representation is mandatory for foreign owners, not optional after registration.
An accumulating use file. Updated annually, per registration, in a form you could produce under pressure.
Awareness of the five-year Madrid dependency window, if you filed through Madrid, and a decision about whether to mitigate it.
A renewal calendar that lives outside your head. Twelve months before expiry is the opening of the window, not the deadline.
A verification habit for unsolicited correspondence. Nothing bearing your registration number is an instruction unless it arrives through a channel you established.

None of these are filing tasks. They are maintenance tasks, and the discipline they require is the discipline of noticing that a foreign portfolio has a structural weakness: the party best placed to act on your behalf is a party you have to appoint, pay and keep engaged, and there is no default mechanism that does it for you.

Frequently asked questions

What is a domestic document recipient in a China trademark filing?

It is a party physically located in mainland China who accepts service of official documents from CNIPA on the applicant's behalf. Foreign applicants must designate one, because the office does not serve foreign addresses. In most filings it is the applicant's Chinese trademark agency; a mainland subsidiary or affiliate can also be named. The recipient is the channel through which refusal notices, correction requests and other time-critical documents reach the applicant, so a recipient that has moved or ceased to function is a direct threat to the registration.

Do I still need a Chinese agent after my trademark is registered?

Yes. Under Article 18 of the Trademark Law, foreigners and foreign enterprises without a habitual residence or place of business in China must entrust a trademark agency established in China for trademark matters generally, not only for the original application. Renewal, assignment, licence recordal, responding to a non-use cancellation and opposing later conflicting applications all require a Chinese agent. There is no point at which a foreign owner becomes able to act directly.

Can a mainland subsidiary replace my trademark agency?

It can serve as the domestic document recipient, but it does not remove the representation requirement for most substantive matters, and it introduces its own fragility. A subsidiary can be wound up, relocated, renamed or reorganised. A trademark registration runs for ten years and renews indefinitely, so whoever holds this role needs to persist across that horizon or be replaced on the register when they cannot.

I filed through the Madrid System. Does any of this change?

The filing route changes; the ongoing duties do not. A Madrid designation of China still requires a Chinese agency for subsequent proceedings, and the renewal calendar still applies. Madrid adds one risk that direct filings do not carry: for five years from the international registration date, the China designation depends on your basic application or registration at home, so a successful attack on that basic right can take the China protection with it.

What happens if I move my office and do not update the register?

The register continues to show your old name or address. That mismatch surfaces later — at renewal, at assignment, or when you need to assert the right — and it has to be corrected before the substantive step can proceed. The official fee for a change is small, and on the electronic route the change fee is zero. It is one of the cheapest things you can do and one of the most commonly deferred.

How often should I update my evidence of use in China?

Annually, at minimum, and at the time the evidence is created where possible. A non-use cancellation can be filed against a registration that has not been used in mainland China for three continuous years, and the case is won or lost on what you can produce. Distributor invoices, import records, advertising, packaging as sold and e-commerce listings are far easier to collect while the relevant staff and systems are still in place.

What are the official fees for keeping a China trademark alive?

Renewal of a registration is 450 yuan per class on the electronic route or 500 yuan on paper, with a late fee of 225 yuan or 250 yuan respectively if the six-month grace period is used. A change of applicant name or address is free electronically and 150 yuan on paper. These are the published tariffs; a foreign owner will additionally pay agency fees, because agency representation is mandatory.

Can I let my trademark agency go once everything is settled?

Not while the registration stands, and not without arranging a replacement. Foreign owners remain legally obliged to be represented in China, so ending an agency relationship without recording a new representative does not make you independent — it makes you unrepresented while deadlines continue to arrive. The domestic recipient field on your file is what the office will use, and it must point somewhere that works.

How do I tell whether correspondence about my China trademark is genuine?

Look at the channel, not the content. An unsolicited email or letter quoting your genuine application or registration number — those numbers are public — is not an official instruction. Chinese official fees are set by published tariff and are collected through the office or through the agent on record, not through accounts named in cold approaches. Route anything bearing your mark's name through the agent who is actually on record.