Written for foreign companies filing into China. Every figure carries its source, its document number and the date we last checked it — and where we could not verify something, we say that instead of filling the gap.
The statutory process for a company with no place of business in China. Nine months to examine, three months to oppose, fifteen days to appeal — with the article numbers.
Read →Official fee schedules for trademarks and patents, with document numbers and effective dates. Including the part where CNIPA's own page contradicts the current standard.
Read →The Nice Classification 13th edition took effect on 1 January 2026. China's similarity groups sit on top of it, and they decide what your registration is actually worth.
Read →WIPO cut the fee for designating China on 12 April 2026 — 220 CHF, down from 249. Plus an honest account of which claims about Madrid we could not verify.
Read →CNIPA's filing guide asks for a photocopy. Not a notarised one. China joining the Apostille Convention changed nothing about filing — and India objected to the accession.
Read →Which class is your product in? All 45 classes as China applies them, deliberately coarse — because scope is decided a level down, in the similarity groups.
Read →Three rules, and they are the whole method.
Every number carries its origin. Not “the official fee is ¥270” but ¥270, per the CNIPA schedule, in force since 1 July 2019, under these four document numbers, here is the link. You should be able to check us without taking anything on trust.
Statute and practice are labelled differently. “CNIPA has nine months to examine” is Article 28. “Goods in the same subclass are presumed similar” is how the Classification Table gets applied — real, load-bearing, and not written in any statute. Conflating the two is how confident-sounding advice goes wrong.
We mark what we do not know. There are several boxes on these pages saying we could not verify something. They are not disclaimers, they are findings. When the fee-reduction rules for foreign applicants have no official answer, the useful thing to publish is that there is no official answer — not a guess in a confident voice.
