Recently, the Trademark Office under China State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) published Chinese trademark registration data on the trademark registration facilitation reforms briefing. As of the end of June this year, 11.223 million valid trademarks have been registered in China, accounting for about one third of the total valid registered trademarks of the world.

At the briefing, an official in charge introduced that, during the first half of this year, over 1.74 million trademark applications have been filed in China and the total applications of the whole year is expected to reach 3.5 million. Since 2002, the Chinese trademark registration application has ranked first in the world for 14 consecutive years.

According to the official,the opinions on the facilitation reforms of vigorously promote the trademark registration, published by SAIC recently concluding some measures to promote trademarks development, such as to add trademark registration application acceptance at the local office, to establish trademark examination collaborating centers outside Beijing, to fully implement the liberalization of the online application for trademark registrations; to gradually expend the online service of registration application, to shorten the issued time of trademark registration application acceptance notice from 6 months to 3 months so as to achieve the electronic registration of trademarks during the whole process step by step,etc.

(by Mao Liguo)

(Source: CHINA REPORT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY)