Short answer
CNIPA examined 6.68 million trademark applications in 2024 and approved 71.2%. Substantive examination now takes about three to four months, and a straightforward application reaches registration in roughly six to eight. With a cycle that short, a formality notice now takes up a much bigger share of the timeline.
Five problems account for most avoidable delay for foreign applicants: a specification not drawn from the Chinese standard list; subclass coverage gaps, which is the expensive one; identity documents that do not match the applicant name; a priority claim that misses the three-month window; and a filing strategy built on the assumption that a letter of consent will clear a citation. All five can be dealt with before filing.
1. The specification is not drawn from the Chinese standard list
CNIPA requires goods and services descriptions in national applications to conform strictly to the standard names in the Chinese Classification of Similar Goods and Services. Wording that reads perfectly well in a U.S. or EU specification will frequently not appear on that list, and a non-conforming description draws a notification of amendment, which costs a round of correspondence and sometimes forces a narrower description than you intended.
Descriptions that reliably cause trouble:
- Vague intermediary wording in Class 36 — “brokerage” on its own is not specific enough.
- “Gaming” — the translation drifts toward gambling, which is prohibited.
- Broad retail and wholesale wording, which does not map cleanly onto the Chinese Class 35 subclasses.
- Goods that are restricted or unlawful in China, including certain foodstuffs, medical devices and species-derived materials.
Madrid designations are treated differently: CNIPA applies a relatively flexible standard to the descriptions in an international registration and will accept terms drawn from the international register even where they diverge from the Chinese list. That sounds like an advantage, but it is the main cause of problem two.
2. Subclass coverage gaps 类似商品和服务区分表
This is where Chinese practice differs most from U.S. and EU filing, and it is the point U.S. applicants most often misread.
Every Nice class is divided into subclasses (“similar groups”, 类似群, in CNIPA’s terms), each with a four-digit code: the first two digits are the class and the last two the subclass. Items in the same subclass are presumed similar. Items in different subclasses are presumed dissimilar even within the same class, unless the Table’s own notes cross-refer them. Examiners work this way because the volume makes case-by-case similarity analysis impossible.
The number of subclasses varies by class and changes as the Table is revised each year. Counting numbered subclasses in the current Table, Class 15 has 2, Class 32 has 3, Class 36 has 9, Class 25 has 13, Class 1 has 17, Class 30 has 19 and Class 9 has 24; some of those numbers now stand empty because goods have been moved between subclasses in successive editions. For an applicant, the count matters much less than which subclasses its own goods fall into.
Worked example: Class 25
The Class 25 heading, “clothing, footwear, headgear”, is the title of the class, a short description of everything in it. What a filing actually protects is narrower: the goods it lists, each of which sits in one subclass.
U.S. practice makes this easy to miss. At the USPTO, “clothing” on its own is too indefinite and has to be itemised as “clothing, namely, …”. In China, “clothing” (服装) is itself a standard, accepted term, and it sits in subclasses 2501, 2502, 2503, 2504 and 2505. So a U.S.-drafted specification arrives in China as a list of items, and what it protects depends on where each item lands. Compare two lists of six:
Subclass | Covers | Covered by a filing for these six items? | |
|---|---|---|---|
Coats, T-shirts, suits, skirts, trousers, underpants | Shoes, hats, socks, gloves, scarves, belts | ||
2501 | Clothing | Yes | No |
2502 | Babies’ textile articles | No | No |
2503 | Special sportswear | No | No |
2504 | Waterproof clothing | No | No |
2505 | Theatrical costumes | No | No |
2506 | Vacated: special-purpose footwear was folded into 2507 in the tenth edition | ||
2507 | Footwear | No | Yes |
2508 | Headgear | No | Yes |
2509 | Hosiery | No | Yes |
2510 | Gloves (other than special-purpose gloves) | No | Yes |
2511 | Neckties, scarves, shawls, veils | No | Yes |
2512 | Belts and clothing straps | No | Yes |
2513 | Stand-alone items, including wedding dresses, sleep masks and bath caps | No | No |
Both lists have six items. The first covers one subclass out of twelve; the second covers six, but leaves ordinary clothing in 2501 open. Goods in subclasses a filing does not reach are presumed dissimilar, so the same mark can in principle be registered by someone else there. Wedding dresses, which a clothing brand would expect to count as clothing, sit in 2513.
This is typical of Madrid designations. Because CNIPA reads an international registration’s goods as filed rather than remapping them to the Chinese Table, an IR specification usually lands in fewer subclasses than the holder expects, and the gap only shows when someone files into it.
A common surprise
Narrowing your goods does not escape a citation if the narrowed item stays in the same subclass. In the United States or the European Union, limiting a specification is a standard way to work around an earlier mark. In China it does not help unless the limitation moves the goods into a different subclass. Applicants, and sometimes their advisers, can spend a full refusal-review cycle finding this out.
What to do instead: map subclasses at the search stage, and decide coverage subclass by subclass rather than class by class. Where China matters commercially, file nationally with a specification drafted to the Chinese list, or file a national application alongside the Madrid designation to close the gaps the IR leaves.
3. Applicant identity, name and address
The requirements are simple. Mistakes here are still costly, and some only surface years later.
Item | Requirement | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
Identity document | Certificate of incorporation or passport, with a Chinese translation | A trading name or brand entity is given instead of the registered legal entity |
Name and address | Exactly as they appear on that document | The address was updated on the website and in the CRM, but not on the certificate |
Power of attorney | A simply signed POA is sufficient — no notarisation or legalisation. Court proceedings differ: for administrative litigation, such as an appeal against a CNIPA decision, the POA must be notarised and authenticated — for a U.S.-signed document, now an apostille, since China joined the Apostille Convention in November 2023 | Not filed at all, because the team assumed it needed legalising and left it for later |
Chinese rendering of the applicant name | Consistent across every filing | A different translation on a later filing breaks the chain for oppositions, assignments and renewals |
The Chinese rendering of the company name is the item that causes trouble years later rather than weeks later. Fix one version at the first filing and reuse it — including on Customs recordals and licence recordals.
4. The priority claim runs out
Where you claim priority from an earlier foreign application, a certified copy of the priority document with a Chinese translation must be on file either at filing or within three months of the Chinese filing date (Trademark Law, Article 25).
Missing it does not end the application, but it does lose the priority date. In a first-to-file system, where someone else’s intervening filing is a real risk, the priority date is usually the reason for claiming priority in the first place. Order the certified copy when you instruct the Chinese filing rather than waiting for the reminder.
5. The filing plan assumes a letter of consent
CNIPA and the Beijing courts have moved steadily away from accepting letters of consent and coexistence agreements as a route past a cited earlier mark. China now stands out among the TM5 offices as the one that, in practice, does not recognise them.
Where a consent letter is nonetheless attempted, it needs to be notarised and legalised, accompanied by proof of the signatory’s authority, free of conditions or time limits, expressed to cover both registration and use, and specific to the PRC, and even then it may not be accepted.
What to do instead: treat the clearance search as the decision point. If there is a citation, either clear it (by non-use cancellation, invalidation or a negotiated assignment) or change the mark. Filing in the hope of negotiating a consent later works in the U.S. and the EU; in China it usually does not.
Two substantive grounds that have tightened
Both of these tightened during 2025, helped by improved examiner language capability and by CNIPA’s use of AI tools to assess the semantic content of foreign-language marks.
Distinctiveness (Article 11). Examiners now read English and other foreign-language marks for meaning much more accurately than they did five years ago. Marks that are suggestive in English and were previously registered as arbitrary strings in China are being refused as descriptive.
Deceptiveness (Article 10(1)(7)). This is an absolute ground, and it sits at the centre of CNIPA’s current campaign against what Chinese practitioners call “scheming marks” (心机商标): signs designed to suggest a quality, ingredient or origin the goods may not have. Article 10 bars these signs from use as trademarks, not only from registration: under Article 52, a local market regulator can order the use stopped and impose a fine of up to 20% of illegal turnover (up to RMB 10,000 where turnover is below RMB 50,000). A review of refusal takes eight to twelve months (Article 34 allows nine, extendable by three), and in our experience a review on this ground very rarely succeeds, so the practical response is to change the mark. From 1 January 2027 the provision becomes Article 15 of the revised law, which spells the target out: marks likely to mislead the public about the goods’ “quality, craftsmanship, raw materials or other characteristics, or place of origin”.
Pre-filing checklist
✓ | Before you file | Why |
|---|---|---|
1 | Subclass map for every class you care about | Protection follows the goods you list, and each item sits in one subclass |
2 | Specification drafted to the Chinese standard list, then read back in English | Avoids an amendment notice, and catches meaning that shifted in translation |
3 | Clearance search run against subclasses, not classes | A citation in a different subclass is not a citation; one in the same subclass cannot be narrowed away |
4 | Decision on any citation taken now | Consent letters are not a reliable route in China |
5 | Identity document, translation and POA in hand | POA needs no notarisation, but it does need to exist |
6 | One fixed Chinese rendering of the applicant name | Consistency across filings, recordals and future proceedings |
7 | Certified priority document ordered | Three months from the Chinese filing date (Article 25) |
8 | A Chinese-character version of the mark considered | If you do not choose one, the market will, and someone may register it |
Sunshine Intellectual Property International Co., Ltd. files and prosecutes trademarks before CNIPA for foreign applicants, including subclass mapping and clearance before filing. Classification details reflect the Table in force in September 2026. Article numbers are those of the Trademark Law in force until 31 December 2026; from 1 January 2027 the revised law renumbers them (Article 10 becomes 15, 25 becomes 29, 34 becomes 37 and 52 becomes 62).
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/1342. 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.
