The Challenge: Trademark Squatting in China
One of the greatest challenges that many foreign companies face
when entering the Chinese market, is that their brand has already
been registered as a trademark by a Chinese company. The registrant
could be the foreign company’s (former) distributor or agent,
but it could also be a professional trademark squatter who snaps up
mainly foreign trademarks, with the goal of selling these back to
the legitimate owner for (huge) profit.
Under current PRC trademark laws, the rightful owner can take
administrative and legal actions to get their trademark back;
available tools including the opposition, the invalidation or the
court action against a squatted mark. But while the chance of
winning these procedures has increased considerably in recent
years, they take a lot of time to complete (often 3-5 years) and
the process is complicated, exhausting many foreign companies to
the point that they simply give up and develop a new
