Tag: China Trademark Office

China Trademark Office

China Trademark Office is the only government authority in China responsible for all trademark registration matters in China.

It is under the supervision of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China (“SAIC“).

China Trademark Office can be referred to as “CTO” or “CTMO”.

The official website of China Trademark Office is: www.ctmo.gov.cn or sbj.saic.gov.cn All other websites which are not ended with “.gov.cn” are not official government websites in China.

Separate from China Trademark Office, there is another government authority which is responsible for reviewing the decisions made by China Trademark Office. It is called the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (“TRAB“). TRAB is also under the supervision of the SAIC. The trademark re-examination and trademark invalidation cases will be reviewed by the TRAB.

The official website of TRAB is: www.saic.gov.cn/spw/

Spokesman of China Trademark Office: all delayed Trademark Registration Certificates will be delivered by the end of May

Previous story: Delayed Trademark Registration Certificates

Since August 27, 2015, none of the trademark attorneys in China had received any Trademark Registration Certificates from China Trademark Office. Why? The reason given by China Trademark Office sounds unreal: they are running out of paper.

It is not any ordinary printing paper that you can purchase from Staples. It is a special anti-fake paper which is used to print the money. According to the law, China Trademark Office has to go through the public tendering process to purchase such paper from qualified suppliers.

The public record shows that China Trademark Office invited tenders for the supply of 3 million pieces of special anti-fake paper on January 14, 2016 and the deal was made on January 26, 2016.

But why did they only start to purchase the paper in January 2016 but did not do that in August 2015 when the paper ran out? No one can answer this question.

Solution

According to the spokesman of China Trademark Office on April 7, 2016, after the above story was published by the media, the leaders of China Trademark Office paid high attention to this matter and initiated an internal investigation.

The spokesman said that this incident was caused by complicated public tendering procedures and miscommunication among the relevant departments. China Trademark Office sincerely apologize for delaying the issuance of Trademark Registration Certificates and for the inconvenience brought to the trademark owners.

Now the paper is in place and China Trademark Office has commenced to print and issue the Trademark Registration Certificates since March 28, 2016. It is expected that all delayed Trademark Registration Certificates will be delivered to the trademark owners by the end of May.

The spokesman also said that China Trademark Office will learn the lesson from this incident, optimize the process, and improve efficiency in order to prevent such incident from happening again.