China to further shorten trademark review cycle

BEIJING - China will further shorten the trademark review cycle to less than four months and improve its current trademark registration services by 2020, an official from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) said on Thursday.

Trademark applications in China reached around 5.75 million in 2017 over increasing entrepreneurship and innovation, up 55.7 percent year-on-year.

Facing more trademark registrations in the coming years, the trademark administration authority needs to deepen reform to better serve the market players and the public, said Chen Wentong, deputy director of SIPO's trademark office.

Since 2016, China has facilitated trademark registration process, shortening official trademark review cycle from nine months to eight months.

In a three-year plan issued in March this year, the SIPO vowed to accelerate trademark registration by improving efficiency of reviews, simplifying application procedures, upgrading technical support, and promoting judicial protection.