China Trademark Registration Before 2027: What the New Law Changes for Buyers Who Own Their Brand

On September 28, 2026, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) published draft revisions to its Trademark Examination and Adjudication Guidelines. Comments stay open until November 12. The draft is the operating manual for the revised Trademark Law, which takes effect on January 1, 2027. For a buyer who develops a product with a Chinese factory and sells it under their own name, that date matters. It turns China trademark registration from a pending item into a deadline.

The week’s trade headlines went elsewhere. After the September 25 summit in Washington, the United States and China listed goods worth 30 billion dollars per side for reciprocal tariff cuts. We covered how buyers should read tariff moves in our China tariff 2026 guide. However, for a company that owns a brand and outsources production, the quieter CNIPA notice has the longer reach.

The problem fits in one line. China trademark registration works on a first-to-file basis. The revised law punishes bad-faith filings, but it does not hand a mark back to the company that used it first outside China. In practice, the party best placed to file your brand before you do is the factory that makes it, or the agent who introduced you.

What the revised Trademark Law changes on January 1, 2027

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the revised law on June 26, 2026. It runs to 87 articles in nine chapters, and it keeps the first-to-file principle. What changes is the cost of abusing it, and how fast a brand owner has to react. For a buyer, these are the points that matter:

• Intent to use becomes a filing requirement. Under Article 19, CNIPA will reject applications with no intent to use that clearly exceed normal production or business needs.
• Bad-faith applicants pay. The applicant faces a warning and a fine of up to 100,000 yuan, about 14,710 dollars. An agency that knew or should have known faces up to 200,000 yuan, about 29,500 dollars, under Article 68.
• The opposition window shrinks. Article 36 cuts the time to oppose a published application from three months to two.
• Digital use counts. Article 2 recognizes use in e-commerce, digital advertising and social media as evidence of genuine use.
• Non-use gets riskier. CNIPA can revoke a mark that sits unused for three consecutive years without a legitimate reason. From 2027, it can also open a non-use cancellation on its own initiative.

The draft guidelines published this week cover eight areas, including applications that exceed normal operating needs, intentional preemptive registration and prior legitimate rights. In other words, CNIPA is defining right now the criteria its examiners will apply from January. Anyone whose China trademark registration is still pending has one quarter left under the current rules.

Why the factory can file your brand before you do

Think about who sees your brand first. Before a single unit ships, the factory has your logo on artwork files, on mold drawings, on packaging dielines and on the approval sample. So does the sourcing agent who set up the introduction, and sometimes a trading company sitting between you and the plant. Any of them can take that file to a trademark agency. Most never will. The law now assumes that some do.

The revised law names this scenario. Article 22 lists unauthorized registration by agents, representatives or parties with a contractual relationship with the brand owner as one of seven bad-faith conducts. Article 24 protects prior legitimate rights and interests. Both articles give a buyer an argument. Neither gives a buyer the mark.

Proving bad faith means showing contracts, dated correspondence and evidence that your brand existed before the filing. That takes time and legal fees, and it happens after the factory already holds a China trademark registration in its own name. Filing first is cheaper than every alternative that follows.

Two months to oppose is less time than it sounds

Under the current law, a brand owner has three months from publication to oppose a conflicting application. From January, Article 36 cuts that to two. Two months is a short window for a company that is not watching CNIPA publications every month. Many importers learn about a conflicting filing much later, once the registration has already gone through.

Once the window closes, the remaining route is invalidation, which is slower and more expensive. Owners of well-known marks can request invalidation without a time limit. However, a new own-brand product from a mid-sized importer is not a well-known mark. Therefore, monitoring stops being optional. Either you or your agency checks new publications in your classes every month, or the two-month clock runs without you.

Courts are already fining the agencies that do the squatting

In April 2026, the Supreme People’s Court published as a typical case a ruling from Guangzhou. A local brewery had used the mark Lan Mei since 2001. From 2017, a competitor registered variants such as Lan Wei Beer and Lan Mei Beer. The Yuexiu District Court, and on appeal the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court, found both the competitor and its trademark agency liable for unfair competition. The competitor paid 500,000 yuan and the agency paid 100,000 yuan.

Two lessons carry over to the buyer’s desk. First, Chinese courts now hold the agency that executes a squatting filing responsible, not only the client who ordered it. Second, the winner was a Chinese company with two decades of documented use inside China. A foreign buyer launching a new brand has neither the local record nor the twenty years. That gap is exactly what an early China trademark registration closes.

A China trademark registration checklist for the next three months

China Law Blog laid out five practical steps for foreign brands ahead of 2027. From the buyer’s side of the table, the list looks like this:

1. File your China trademark registration now, under the current rules. Use an agency recognized by CNIPA and file before the year ends. Cover the classes where your product actually sits, but do not over-file, because Article 19 now rejects portfolios that clearly exceed normal business needs.
2. Register the logo you actually use. Material changes to a logo can require a new application. A wide gap between the registered mark and the one on your packaging also weakens your defense in a non-use cancellation.
3. Keep your registrant details current. Changes made without the proper filing can cost fines of up to 50,000 yuan or the registration itself.
4. Build a use file from day one. Keep factory invoices that name the brand, packaging photos and shipping documents. Photos from your pre-shipment inspection with the brand visible on the cartons count as dated, third-party evidence. Article 2 now treats e-commerce and social media as use, so dated screenshots belong in the file too.
5. Watch CNIPA publications monthly. Two months to oppose only works if someone is looking.
6. Put ownership in the manufacturing agreement. State in writing that the brand, the artwork and any mark on the molds belong to you, and that the supplier will not file them. Under Article 22, that contract is also the evidence you would need if they did.

Filing is half the job. The supplier is the other half.

A China trademark registration in your name settles who owns the brand. It does not say whether the company receiving your artwork is a factory or a trading company. Nor does it say whether that company has filed other clients’ marks before. You answer those questions on site, not by email.

That is the part BiiLinx does from Shenzhen. Our own team verifies manufacturers and visits the plant. It also sits in the negotiation where ownership of the brand, the molds and the artwork goes into the written agreement. The filing itself belongs with a trademark agency recognized by CNIPA, and no negotiation comes with a guaranteed outcome. What we can do is make sure the supplier on the other side of your filing is the one you think it is. If you are developing a product under your own name for 2027, the order of operations is simple: file first, sign second, send the artwork third. See how our sourcing services work, or contact us about a specific project.