Weekly China Trademark News Updates

October 18, 2022

1. The CNIPA held a symposium on trademark business work

Recently, the Trademark Office of the CNIPA held a symposium on trademark business work to listen to opinions and suggestions of representatives of companies, agencies, and industry associations on trademark business work.

Delegates at the symposium recognized the reform efforts and achievements made by the Trademark Office to improve the quality and efficiency of trademark examination in recent years, and provided suggestions and advice with respect to strengthening the management of “examiner and agency collusion” and information leakage, regulating trademark applications with serious unhealthy effects, cracking down on bad faith trademark squatting and hoarding, further promoting the quality and efficiency of trademark examination and review, and building a first-class trademark examination and review agency.

It is particularly noteworthy that the symposium decided that the CNIPA will immediately set up a special platform on the China Trademark Website to accept complaints and leads, open on-site consultation windows in the trademark registration hall, promptly introduce a special system to deal with bad faith three-year non-use cancellations, and propose to incorporate cracking down on bad faith same-day applications into the next regulation creation project.

We have noticed that when visiting the China Trademark Website now, there is a floating window on the homepage showing “Entrance to Report Leads of Trademark Information Leakage Issues.”

2. Adidas nearly lost the Adidas trademarks. The relevant agency was assessed with administrative penalties.

On the first day after the National Day holiday, the Beijing Xicheng Supervision Bureau issued administrative penalties for illegal agency of two trademark assignments, which involved several main trademarks of Adidas of Germany.

In November 2020, an agency company successively filed for address change, trademark assignment, license recordal, and reissuing registration certificate for multiple trademarks in the name of Adidas AG, including No. 169865 “,” No. 3336263 “,” No. 3921767 “,” and No. 13770600 “.”

In December 2020, the CNIPA received a statement from Adidas, saying that the assignee, a Hong Kong company in the aforementioned assignment applications, had not obtained its authorization, and it had never authorized the agency company to handle trademark matters in its name. Accordingly, all said operations of this agency were not approved by the CNIPA.

The Beijing Municipal Intellectual Property Office reported the violations of this trademark agency to the Beijing Municipal Supervision Bureau. The Municipal Supervision Bureau held that: the agency did not obtain the authorization of the trademark holder and did not fulfill its responsibilities of reviewing in handling the assignments and other related trademark matters. It violated Article 19, Paragraph 3 of the Chinese Trademark Law “If a trademark agency knows or should know that the trademark applied for by the client falls under the circumstances specified in Articles 4, 15 and 32 of this Law, it shall not accept the entrustment.”  According to Article 68(1)(3) of the Chinese Trademark Law, the trademark agency is ordered to correct the above-mentioned illegal acts, and has been given a warning and a fine.

3. Tommy Hilfger continues its wins over Tommycrown

A Chinese company registered the mark “” in class 25 in relation to clothing, sport shoes, gloves, etc. in May 2015, and applied to assign the mark to Tommy Crown (U.K.) International Fashion Co., Ltd in June 2018.

Before the approval of the assignment in November 2018, Tommy Hilfiger Licensing B.V., the owner of registered marks “,” “,” “,” “,” “,” “ ,” filed an invalidation against this mark in September 2018.

The CNIPA made the decision in April 2019, ruling to invalidate the Disputed Mark as it has constituted a similar mark used on the same or similar goods with Tommy Hilfiger’s Cited Marks.

Tommy Crown filed a court appeal before Beijing IP Court, which affirmed mark similarity and the fame of Tommy Hilfiger’s Cited Marks, thereby rejecting the claims of Tommy Crown.

Tommy Crown appealed against the first-instance verdict. The Beijing High Court recently rendered the second-instance judgment finding that:

The Disputed Mark consists of the letters “Tommycrown.” Both the Disputed Mark and the Cited Mark 1 to 10, which contain the letters “TOMMY,” are similar in letter composition and pronunciation. At the same time, the evidence in the case can prove that Tommy Hilfiger’s trademark “TOMMY HILFGER” had a certain reputation in clothing products before the application for registration of the Disputed Mark. Under such circumstance, Tommy Crown still filed for the Disputed Mark with a relatively high degree of similarity and failed to avoid a trademark of others that has achieved a certain reputation. It is difficult to call it goodwill. In view of this, if the Disputed Mark coexists with the Cited Marks, the relevant public, when paying general attention, is likely to believe that the goods using the Disputed Mark originate from the same entity or that there are specific associations between the goods providers, which would cause confusion and misidentification. Therefore, the original judgment and the CNIPA decision are correct to determine that the Disputed Mark and the Cited Marks constituted similar marks used on identical or similar goods, and this court affirms.

Tommy Crown claimed that the CNIPA decision did not comment on its request for suspension of review, and there were major procedural errors. In this regard, this court believes that the current laws and regulations do not require mandatorily that if the Cited Mark is pending before the people’s courts or administrative departments, the CNIPA shall wait for the judgment/decision before rendering a decision. The CNIPA has the discretion to decide whether to suspend according to each case’s circumstances. In this case, although the CNIPA did not comment on the request for suspension by Tommy Crown, it did not violate any legal regulations or rules. Therefore, this court does not support Tommy Crown’s claim.

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