Guide
The official fee schedules for trademarks and patents in China, with the document numbers, the dates they took effect, and links to the government pages they come from.
Because that is the currency they are set in. Every English-language fee table that prints “official fee: $50” has quietly applied an exchange rate, and once that number is baked into HTML nobody ever revisits it. The current online filing fee is ¥270. It has not been $50 in years, and one prominent competitor's fee page still announces that its prices “shall take effect starting December 1, 2016”.
Publishing the yuan figure has a useful side effect: you can hold this table against the government's own schedule and check us line by line. We would rather be checkable than persuasive.
| Item | Paper filing | Online filing |
|---|---|---|
| Application for registration (one mark, one class, up to 10 items) | ¥300 | ¥270 |
| Each additional item beyond 10 in the same class | ¥30 | ¥27 |
| Renewal (per class) | ¥500 | ¥450 |
| Renewal in grace period — surcharge | ¥250 | ¥225 |
| Assignment / transfer (per class) | ¥500 | ¥450 |
| Recordal of changeFree when filed online | ¥150 | ¥0 |
| Opposition (per class) | ¥500 | ¥450 |
| Cancellation (per class) | ¥500 | ¥450 |
| Review / adjudication before the TRAB (per class) | ¥750 | ¥675 |
| Reissue of registration certificate | ¥500 | ¥450 |
| Certificate of trademark record | ¥50 | ¥45 |
| Recordal of licence contract | ¥150 | ¥135 |
| Collective mark | ¥1,500 | ¥1,350 |
| Certification mark | ¥1,500 | ¥1,350 |
Rule: Applications filed online, where the applicant also accepts electronic service of documents, are charged at 90% of the standard rate.
Basis: 计价格〔1995〕2404号、发改价格〔2015〕2136号、财税〔2017〕20号、发改价格〔2019〕914号 — in force since 2019-07-01.
Source: CNIPA Trademark Office — Schedule of Fees
· 2019 adjustment notice.
Last checked 2026-07-16.
Read from the NDRC source PDF rather than from a summary of it — which matters, because the summaries disagree with each other.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Invention — application fee | ¥900 |
| Utility model — application fee | ¥500 |
| Design — application fee | ¥500 |
| Invention — substantive examination fee | ¥2,500 |
| Publication printing fee (invention, at publication stage) | ¥50 |
| Priority claim fee (per priority) | ¥80 |
| Each claim from the 11th onwards | ¥150 |
| Each page of description from the 31st onwards | ¥50 |
| Each page of description from the 301st onwards | ¥100 |
Source: NDRC — Schedule of Patent Fees (Domestic) (PDF). Last checked 2026-07-16.
Payable for the life of the patent. This is where the real cost of a Chinese patent portfolio lives, and it is the column most fee comparisons leave out.
| Term | Annuity |
|---|---|
| Years 1–3 | ¥900per year |
| Years 4–6 | ¥1,200per year |
| Years 7–9 | ¥2,000per year |
| Years 10–12 | ¥4,000per year |
| Years 13–15 | ¥6,000per year |
| Years 16–20 | ¥8,000per year |
| Term | Annuity |
|---|---|
| Years 1–3 | ¥600per year |
| Years 4–5 | ¥900per year |
| Years 6–8 | ¥1,200per year |
| Years 9–10 | ¥2,000per year |
Late payment carries a surcharge of 5% of that year's full annuity per month of delay. Miss it far enough and the patent lapses; restoration costs ¥1,000 and is not automatic.
With effect from 2018-08-01, CNIPA Announcement No. 272 suspended:
Source: 国家知识产权局公告第272号 —— 停征部分专利收费. If a fee schedule still bills you a patent registration fee, it has not been updated since 2018.
China reduces patent fees by 85% for a single qualifying applicant, or 70% where there are two or more. The current thresholds are individual annual income below ¥60,000, or enterprise taxable income below ¥1,000,000, in force since 2019-07-01 under 财税〔2019〕45号.
Here is something worth knowing before you trust any English article on this topic. CNIPA's own page on fee reductions still carries the superseded 2016 figures — monthly income below ¥3,500 and enterprise taxable income below ¥300,000 — which were replaced in 2019. The official site contradicts the official standard. Anyone who sourced their numbers from that page, in good faith, is wrong. We use the State Taxation Administration page, which carries the current figures.
Can a foreign applicant claim the reduction? We could not establish this from any official source, so we are not going to tell you either way. The Measures do not exclude foreign applicants. But the evidence they demand — a Chinese corporate income tax return, or an income certificate from the applicant's Chinese work unit — presupposes the Chinese tax system, and an entity with no Chinese tax filings would struggle to produce it. Second-hand sources that answer this confidently appear to be conflating a foreign applicant's ability to pay fees directly with eligibility for a reduction of them. Those are different questions. If this matters to your filing budget, we will put the question to CNIPA in writing on your behalf.
¥270 per class filed online, covering up to ten items of goods or services in that class. Each item beyond ten adds ¥27. On paper it is ¥300 and ¥30. These rates have been in force since 1 July 2019 and are published by CNIPA.
No. The official fee is ¥270, set in yuan, and it has not been worth $50 for a long time. That $50 figure appears on several English-language China trademark sites, at least one of which has carried it since 2016. It is an old rate converted at an old exchange rate. The problem is not the arithmetic — it is that a fee table nobody has updated in a decade tells you something about how the rest of the service is run.
CNIPA charges 90% of the standard rate where you file online and accept electronic service of documents. Both conditions apply.
We do not know, and we will not pretend otherwise. The Measures do not expressly exclude foreign applicants. But the evidence they require — a Chinese corporate income tax return, or an income certificate from the applicant's Chinese work unit — assumes the applicant is inside the Chinese tax system. We have not found an official statement resolving it either way. Sources that tell you confidently that foreign applicants qualify are, as far as we can tell, conflating paying fees with qualifying for a reduction of them.
No. The patent registration fee, the announcement printing fee at grant, the recordal fee for changing patent agency, and the PCT transmittal fee were all suspended with effect from 2018-08-01 by CNIPA Announcement No. 272. Fee tables that still list them are out of date.
