Short answer
China offers four enforcement routes, and in practice they are used together, in sequence. An administrative complaint to the local Administration for Market Regulation (AMR) is the fastest way to stop production and seize goods, but it cannot award you compensation. Civil litigation is the only route that produces damages and an injunction enforceable nationwide. A criminal referral adds deterrence, and a customs recordal is the cheapest ongoing protection available.
The 2025 volumes show how the system is actually used: Chinese authorities investigated roughly 36,000 trademark violations administratively and referred 1,128 for criminal handling, while the courts accepted 121,133 first-instance civil trademark cases. The usual pattern is administrative action first, to build the evidence, and civil litigation after it, to recover losses.
The four routes at a glance
Administrative (AMR) | Civil litigation | Criminal | Customs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
What you get | Order to stop, seizure and destruction of goods and tooling, a fine paid to the state | Damages, injunction enforceable nationwide, recovery of reasonable enforcement expenses | Fines and imprisonment; social-credit consequences for the defendant | Detention of goods at the border, before they ship |
Money to you | None | Yes | Restitution possible, not the purpose | None |
Geographic reach | The acting AMR’s jurisdiction only | Nationwide | Nationwide | Border |
How long it takes | 15 working days to decide whether to open a case; 90 days to decide it, extendable | Six months at first instance for a domestic case; no statutory limit once a party is foreign | Long, and outside your control | Days, at the point of inspection |
What you must bring | Registration certificate, authentic samples, a located target and address | Notarised evidence of purchase, and evidence going to quantum | Volume or value evidence over the statutory threshold | A live recordal and a product identification guide |
Main limitation | No damages; fines are paid to the state; reach stops at the authority’s jurisdiction | Slower; quantum requires evidence you may not have | Not yours to start; depends on the thresholds | Stops shipments, does not stop production |
The routes are usually combined. An AMR raid produces the seizure record and evidence of volume, which later support a damages claim and, above the thresholds, a criminal referral. Without that record, a civil claim often has little to base the damages figure on.
Administrative action through the AMR
A complaint to the local AMR, supported by the registration certificate and authentic samples, can produce an unannounced inspection, seizure of infringing goods and the equipment used to make them, and an order to stop. For a factory producing counterfeits, this is the fastest way to interrupt the operation.
The limits are built into the system. The AMR can fine the infringer, but the fine goes to the state; there is no mechanism by which an administrative authority compensates you. Relief is limited to that authority’s jurisdiction, so an operation with production in one province and warehousing in another needs more than one complaint.
It also works to statutory deadlines. Under the State Administration for Market Regulation’s Provisions on Administrative Penalty Procedures, the authority must check a complaint and decide whether to open a case within 15 working days (Article 18), and must decide a case it has opened within 90 days, extendable by 30 days and further in complex cases (Article 64).
Administrative enforcement remains high-volume. Chinese market regulators investigated roughly 36,000 trademark-related violations in 2025, of which 1,128 involved suspected criminal conduct and were referred onward. Across 2024, market supervision authorities handled 44,000 administrative IP cases with total fines of about RMB 1.129 billion — roughly RMB 26,000 per case on average, all of it paid to the state.
Civil litigation and damages
Article 63 sets the damages ladder, in order: the rights holder’s actual loss; failing that, the infringer’s profits; failing that, a multiple of a reasonable royalty. Where infringement is malicious and the circumstances serious, the court may award punitive damages of one to five times that base figure. Where none of the three can be established, statutory damages run up to RMB 5 million. Reasonable expenses incurred to stop the infringement are recoverable on top. That is a real difference from ordinary commercial litigation in China, where legal fees are generally not recoverable.
Punitive damages are no longer exceptional. Chinese courts awarded punitive damages in 460 cases of serious malicious infringement in 2025, a 44.2% year-on-year increase.
For a sense of scale, the largest award in a case we have handled is RMB 1 million, in a trademark infringement and unfair competition action for Huizhou Huiyang Heshi Cosmetics Co., Ltd. (惠州市惠阳区何氏化妆品有限公司), a Chinese brand owner. A foreign plaintiff comes before the same courts, under the same Article 63 rules.
What it costs to file
Court acceptance fees are set on a public sliding scale by the amount in dispute, and they are modest by U.S. standards. What clients usually underestimate is the cost of evidence: notarised purchases, investigation, and the accounting work behind a damages claim.
Amount in dispute (RMB) | Acceptance fee |
|---|---|
Up to 10,000 | RMB 50 flat |
10,001 – 100,000 | 2.5% of the excess |
100,001 – 200,000 | 2.0% of the excess |
200,001 – 500,000 | 1.5% of the excess |
500,001 – 1,000,000 | 1.0% of the excess |
1,000,001 – 2,000,000 | 0.9% of the excess |
2,000,001 – 5,000,000 | 0.8% of the excess |
5,000,001 – 10,000,000 | 0.7% of the excess |
10,000,001 – 20,000,000 | 0.6% of the excess |
Over 20,000,000 | 0.5% of the excess |
The scale is cumulative: each rate applies only to the part of the claim inside its band. It is set by Article 13 of the State Council’s Measures on the Payment of Litigation Costs, which also fixes RMB 500 to 1,000 for an IP civil case with no amount in dispute, such as a claim for an injunction alone. Counsel fees are separate; in ordinary commercial litigation they are generally not recoverable, but Article 63 makes reasonable expenses of stopping infringement recoverable in trademark cases.
How long it takes
The Civil Procedure Law sets first-instance time limits of six months under the ordinary procedure (Article 152), three months under the simple procedure (Article 164) and two months for small claims (Article 168), each extendable.
For a foreign rights holder, the six months does not apply
A case in which one party is a foreign company is a foreign-related civil case. Article 287 of the Civil Procedure Law exempts foreign-related cases from the six-month first-instance limit and the three-month appeal limit, and the small-claims procedure is not available to them at all (Article 166). When you set expectations with your client, do not use the domestic time limits as a timetable.
Criminal referral and the 2025 thresholds
A rights holder cannot choose the criminal route. Whether a case qualifies depends on the thresholds restated in the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate interpretation (Fa Shi [2025] No. 5) that took effect on 26 April 2025. They are worth knowing early, because they tell you whether an administrative case could later support a referral.
Offence | “Serious circumstances” | Deemed “particularly serious” at |
|---|---|---|
Counterfeiting a registered trademark on goods | Illegal gains ≥ RMB 30,000, or illegal business volume ≥ RMB 50,000 | Ten times those amounts (Art. 3) |
Counterfeiting a registered service mark | Illegal gains ≥ RMB 50,000 | Ten times (Art. 3) |
Selling goods bearing a counterfeit mark | Illegal gains ≥ RMB 30,000, or sales ≥ RMB 50,000 | Ten times (Art. 5) |
Illegally manufacturing trademark labels | ≥ 10,000 labels, or illegal gains ≥ RMB 20,000, or illegal business volume ≥ RMB 30,000 | Five times (Art. 6) |
Article numbers refer to the 2025 Interpretation. Thresholds are lower where two or more registered marks are counterfeited, or where the offender was penalised for a trademark offence within the previous two years: RMB 20,000 in gains or RMB 30,000 in business volume for goods, RMB 30,000 in gains for services (Art. 3); for labels of two or more marks, 5,000 labels, RMB 10,000 in gains or RMB 20,000 in business volume (Art. 6). Fines are generally one to ten times illegal gains or, where gains cannot be established, 50% to 100% of illegal business volume (Art. 25). Chinese courts accepted 9,018 first-instance criminal IP cases in 2025, of which 7,862 were trademark cases.
Customs recordal
Recordal with the General Administration of Customs is inexpensive, lasts ten years and is renewable. Once recorded, Customs can act on its own initiative against suspect shipments. Ex officio action accounts for more than 90% of seizures, so most of what a recordal delivers happens without further work on your side.
Chinese Customs conducted 53,200 inspections and detained 41,600 shipments of suspected infringing goods in 2024. Where Customs detains at your request rather than on its own initiative, you have 20 working days from detention to obtain a court order, or the goods are released; in ex officio cases Customs’ investigation period is 30 working days from seizure.
In practice, whether a recordal works depends on the product identification guide you give Customs: how to tell genuine goods from counterfeits, in Chinese, with photographs, updated whenever the packaging changes. Officers decide quickly at inspection, and that guide is what they work from.
Administrative litigation is a different thing
“Judicial” enforcement in China can mean two different things. One is civil litigation against an infringer. The other is administrative litigation: an appeal against a CNIPA decision on registration, opposition, invalidation or cancellation, heard by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Administrative litigation produces no damages and does not stop infringement. It decides who holds the right.
It has its own time limits: a first-instance judgment is due within six months of docketing, extendable only with a higher court’s approval (Administrative Litigation Law, Article 81), or within 45 days where the simple procedure applies (Article 83).
Administrative IP litigation is growing considerably faster than civil. Chinese courts accepted 27,451 first-instance administrative IP cases in 2025, up 31.67% year on year, and 24,334 of them (88.65%) were trademark cases. Against that, first-instance civil trademark cases fell 3.03% to 121,133. At the top of the system, the Supreme People’s Court IP Tribunal took 2,663 new cases in 2025, 16.9% of them foreign-related, and upheld the decision below in 62.2% of concluded cases while reversing in 15.0%.
A typical sequence
1.Record with Customs as soon as the registration issues, and keep the product identification guide current. It is the cheapest protection available.
2.Investigate before you complain. An AMR complaint with a located address, authentic samples and a documented purchase gets acted on; one without does not.
3.Use administrative action to build the record. The seizure quantities and the AMR’s findings become your evidence of scale — for damages, and for a referral if the volume clears the threshold.
4.Sue to recover losses. Only civil litigation compensates. Where the infringement is malicious and documented, plead punitive damages; courts made 460 such awards in 2025.
5.Refer upward when the numbers qualify, using the thresholds table. The prospect of criminal liability tends to change an infringer’s behaviour more than a fine does.
Figures are drawn from published Chinese official statistics for 2024 and 2025; statutory references are to the provisions in force in September 2026. The revised Trademark Law in force from 1 January 2027 renumbers Article 63 as Article 77 and keeps both the one-to-five-times punitive multiple and the RMB 5 million statutory cap. This is general information, not advice on any particular matter.
Sunshine Intellectual Property International Co., Ltd.
北京三聚阳光知识产权服务集团有限公司
Zhongguancun Intellectual Property Building, 21 Haidian South Road, Haidian District, Beijing · marketing@ipsunshine.com · https://www.ipsunshine.com
Published in the Industry Insights section of https://www.ipsunshine.com/en/new/1341. This note describes general practice in the People’s Republic of China as at September 2026 and is not legal advice on any particular matter.
