At the 2020 Trademark Examination Conference of the State Intellectual Property Office Trademark Office (hereinafter referred to as the Trademark Office) held recently, a set of data released was quite noticeable: China’s trademark examination volume in 2019 was 8.253 million, an increase of 2.62% year-on-year; the qualified rate of sampling inspection for trademark registration substantive examination is 96.08%, which is higher than 95.77% in 2018; the average examination period for trademark registration is reduced to 4.5 months, and the efficiency and quality of trademark examination are steadily improved.  The trademark examination cycle was further shortened, the trademark review quality management system was continuously improved, and efforts to combat trademark hoarding and malicious registration continued to increase.

The number of trademark registration applications in my country reached 7.837 million in 2019, an increase of 6.33% year-on-year.  In order to promote the steady improvement of the quality of trademark examinations, the Trademark Office and local trademark examination cooperation centers have established and improved examination management systems, such as examination task assignment mechanism, examination authority management, special sampling, cross-sampling, legality examination, etc., and comprehensively strengthened the examination quality. Supervision; standardize examination standards, strengthen unified implementation, and the objection and review departments continue to improve the quality of case review through the improvement of the three-level collegiate system; strengthen review capacity building.

The Trademark Office's Examination Affairs Department insists that it is the clear leader of the same or highly similar trademarks of the same batch to ensure the consistency of examination standards. The Guangzhou Trademark Examination Collaboration Center adopts the self-inspection model of “100% of the examination department + 30% of the quality control department + directional sampling” to increase the proportion of self-inspection and achieve full business coverage.  The Shanghai Trademark Examination Collaboration Center has conducted in-depth research on trademark examination standards, promoted the establishment of a banned vocabulary, actively played the role of special groups such as non-standard goods and coexistence groups, regularly organized special business learning exchanges, and comprehensively improved the level of trademark examination.  The Chongqing Trademark Examination Collaboration Center cooperated with the Trademark Office to complete an intelligent search system for graphic trademark examinations, and independently developed an inquiry system for similar trademark service items, which effectively improved the level of trademark examination intelligence.  The Jinan Trademark Examination Collaboration Center conducted graded management and practical evaluation of the examiners, achieving a “zero” record of major examination quality problems since the listing operation.  The Zhengzhou Trademark Examination Collaboration Center carried out the examination of all personnel's trial limits, and formulated relevant regulations on the examination and control of the review limits and the handling of trademarks that exceeded the limits of examination.

At the beginning of this year, the Trademark Office drafted the "Notice on Trademark Acceptance during the Prevention and Control of New Coronavirus Infection Pneumonia (Draft)".  On February 10, the commodity application related to the prevention and control of the epidemic was published in the trademark online application system to facilitate Applicants applied online; issued the “Notice on Relevant Requirements for the Response of New Coronavirus Infection Pneumonia in Trademark Examination Work”, formulated guidelines for trademark examination related to epidemic prevention and control, and increased guidance for trademark examination related to epidemic situations; the issuance of the notice emphasized the emphasis on control and prudential examination, and increased the control of trademark registration applications related to the epidemic situation and prone to adverse effects.  At the same time, establish a linkage mechanism for trademark examination, opposition, review and other procedures to unify the examination and examination standards for controlled trademarks.

2020 is the final year of the trademark registration facilitation reform.  This year, we will continue to launch new measures to support economic development, and strictly and strictly crack down on the application of abnormal trademark registration related to the epidemic; continue to deepen the reform of trademark registration facilitation to ensure that the average review period for trademark registration is compressed to less than 4 months and go online trademark invalidation, opposition within the year, and cancellation of the three-year online application function of non-use of the application business, to realize the online application of the following nine international applications of Chinese applicants; continue to maintain a high-pressure situation against malicious registration, and issue operation guidelines to accelerate the implementation of trademark hoarding, the whole process of malicious registration is cracked down.

From CNIPA

May 20th, 2020