The “Regulations on Regulating Trademark Application and Registration Acts” issued by the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration of China was launched on December 1, 2019. Malicious registration of trademarks and hoarding of trademarks will be severely punished. The new regulations for “non-use for malicious application for trademark registration”, or other applications that violate the principle of good faith, in addition to being rejected or not registered, the applicant will be given a warning according to the circumstances, or be illegal a fine of three times the income up to a maximum of RMB 30,000; if there is no illegal income, a fine of less than RMB 10,000 may be imposed.
In addition to expanding the punishment for malicious registration of trademarks, the regulation still regulates the behavior of trademark agents. For example, a trademark agency cannot accept its entrustment if it knows that the applicant intends to register maliciously; Apart from trademark registration, no other trademarks may be applied for registration, and the order of the trademark agency market shall not be disturbed by improper means.
Article 8 of the Regulations lists a number of trademark special-purpose machines to determine whether a trademark registration application is “malicious trademark registration not for the purpose of use”. The factors that can be considered comprehensively include the number of trademark registrations applied for by the applicant or its affiliates, designated use category, trademark transaction situation; applicant’s industry and business status; whether the applicant has been found by the administrative or judicial authorities in the past to maliciously register trademarks or infringe on the exclusive rights of others to register trademarks; whether the application for registered trademarks exists with others cases where the famous trademark, or the name of a well-known person or company line number is the same or similar, etc. These regulations make the judgment criteria for malicious application for trademark registration more clear and followable.
In addition, in order to effectively curb various violations of laws that disrupt the order of trademark management, Article 14 of the Regulations also stipulates that after an administrative punishment decision is made by an intellectual property-related unit in China, the punishment information shall be publicized to the society through the national enterprise credit information disclosure system.
Released by TIPO
