China’s trademark law overhaul resets both filing and use
China’s revised Trademark Law was formally adopted on 26 June 2026 and will take effect on 1 January 2027. The first wave of official explanations released in early July makes one point hard to miss: this is not a narrow procedural update. It is a broader reset of how trademark filing, use, administration and enforcement are expected to fit together.
The headline issue is tougher action against bad-faith filings and stockpiling. That matters. But the more consequential shift is structural. The law is moving away from a system that could still tolerate “file first, sort it out later” behaviour and toward one that asks a more basic question from the start: why is this mark being filed, how will it be used, and does the rights strategy still make sense once market order and public impact are taken seriously?
The law is no longer centred only on registration mechanics
One of the clearest signals from the revision is that trademarks are now being governed through a fuller life-cycle logic. The revised law reorganises registration conditions, reinforces good faith and rights boundaries, and links filing, use, supervision and exit more explicitly than before. For businesses, that means registration can no longer be treated as a self-contained victory followed by years of passive holding.
This matters because China’s policymakers are not just targeting isolated abusive filings. They are trying to reduce a wider pattern: hoarding, speculative registrations, idle portfolios, deceptive branding and excessive assertion of rights. Once that policy goal is written more clearly into the statute, examiners, enforcement bodies and courts are more likely to read filing behaviour against commercial reality rather than formal paperwork alone.
Bad-faith filing risk now starts much earlier in the process
The practical pivot is the rule that applications filed without an intention to use, and clearly beyond normal business needs, should not be registered. That is a sharper standard than a generic anti-abuse slogan. It gives authorities a more concrete basis to question filing volume, filing patterns and portfolio scale against the applicant’s actual business footprint.
Official explanations also make clear that legal liability is not reserved for the most notorious cases. Bad-faith filing that causes adverse effects can trigger warnings and fines, and trademark agencies that knowingly or negligently facilitate such conduct face a more exposed position as well. That will change the risk calculus on both sides of the instruction letter. Companies will need better internal justification for larger portfolios, and agencies will need stronger filters before accepting borderline mandates.
Use, maintenance and enforcement now sit under the same discipline
The revision does more than tighten filing. It also raises the stakes for what happens after registration. Misleading use of a registered trademark may lead to orders to rectify, administrative fines and, if the problem is not corrected in time, revocation. In other words, the law is not only asking whether a mark was registrable on day one. It is asking whether the mark is being used in a way that distorts market understanding.
The same logic runs through non-use and rights abuse. The revised framework strengthens the exit pressure on marks that sit unused for three consecutive years without proper reason, and official commentary suggests a more active clean-up posture from the authorities. At the same time, abusive assertion and excessive enforcement are no longer side concerns. Brand owners with aggressive enforcement strategies but weak real-world use or messy portfolios may find that those weaknesses surface faster in disputes.
What brand owners should do before 1 January 2027
The first step is not to file more. It is to audit what is already on the books. Businesses should identify which marks are genuinely in use, which are defensive leftovers, which no longer match operating needs and which could be difficult to justify if challenged under a use-intention or normal-business-needs lens. A bloated portfolio is no longer just an administrative burden. It can become a regulatory vulnerability.
The second step is to rebuild evidence and messaging discipline. Teams should review online presentation, product claims, origin-related wording, and the use of motion or digitally presented branding elements. The revised law’s treatment of online trademark use and its stronger stance on misleading use mean that marketing practice and trademark compliance are now more tightly connected.
Finally, companies should recalibrate enforcement strategy. The revised law gives stronger tools against obvious squatters, but it also narrows the comfort zone for rights holders whose own filing and use history cannot withstand scrutiny. The safest position going into 2027 is not the largest filing footprint. It is a cleaner one: marks with a credible filing rationale, a defensible use record and a rights strategy that looks proportionate rather than opportunistic.
