China National Intellectual Property Administration (“CNIPA”) on Mar. 24 released a circular, the Plan for the Special Campaign against Malicious Trademark Registration (the Plan, 打擊商標惡意搶注行為專項行動方案) on its official website, deciding to launch a special campaign to crack down on malicious trademark registration as of Mar. 2021.
The Plan makes it clear that the special campaign focuses on cracking down on the misconducts such as malicious trademark registration, the attempt to gain improper profits, which disturb the order of trademark registration administration and cause relatively adverse social influence arising therefrom. The Plan also enumerates the acts of malicious trademark registration in nine aspects, including “malicious rush registration of titles or names of national or regional strategies, major events, major policies, major projects, and major scientific and technological projects”.
In accordance with the Plan, in the special campaign, legal punishment, administrative guidance, credit constraint and other measures will be comprehensively applied, including (1) promoting the inclusion of records concerned with administrative penalties for malicious trademark registration into the national public credit information catalog and credit archives in accordance with the laws and regulations; (2) intensifying its crackdown on malicious trademark registration conducted by trademark agencies, and for example, in view of the serious circumstances of their acts, the intellectual property office will submit a request to stop accepting their trademark registration application, and so on.
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
