March 5, 2025

China's IP Administration tightens scrutiny on non-use cancellations by increasing the evidentiary burden on the applicant

Stefaan Meuwissen, Helen Xia, Joyce Zheng

Hogan Lovells

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Key takeaways

CNIPA has recently significantly changed its approach to accepting non-use cancellation applications for registered trademarks, by requiring more comprehensive preliminary evidence. This means that applicants in such procedures now need to proceed more prudently and strategically to ensure a successful outcome.

Non-use cancellation proceedings are among the most efficient and cost-effective types of procedures to remove prior trademark registrations and to pave the way for subsequent applications. This has been especially the case now that consent letters are generally no longer accepted by CNIPA. However, over the past several years, the number of non-use cancellation applications filed with CNIPA has increased substantially, and this growth has also included some cancellation procedures filed in bad faith or filed repetitively against the same marks. Further, due to the imbalance in the burden of proof imposed on the applicant compared to the trademark owner, it has not been uncommon for certain applicants to misuse this proceeding. Such misuse has resulted not only in an increased workload for CNIPA, but has also imposed an -at times- substantial burden on the trademark owner involved in the procedure, which seems to have led CNIPA to revise its policy regarding this procedure.

New Developments: filing of preliminary evidence required

Shortly after the Chinese New Year holiday in early 2025, some applicants and their trademark agents have started receiving notifications of amendment ("OA”) from the China National IP Administration (“CNIPA”) relating to non-use cancellation applications, requesting to supplement more evidence showing non-use of the trademark in question. The OAs require applicants to submit the additional evidence within 30 calendar days and the sanction for not meeting the deadline or for submitting insufficient evidence is the rejection of the procedure.

Although the specific type of evidence required in each OA may vary, according to the information we have obtained so far, essentially, CNIPA may require the applicant to supplement the following three types of evidence (all, or part of them) as listed in the below table. To better understand CNIPA’s requirements, we have also contacted CNIPA directly to clarify some issues. We share our comments in the below table as well.

	Types of evidence required by CNIPA to support the non-use cancellation application	Preliminary Comments by Hogan Lovells
1	Basic information about the trademark owner, including business scope, operational status and the registration particulars of the trademark in question;	If the owner of the trademark in question is a Chinese entity, the applicant should obtain the business registration information of the owner through the official website of the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. This requirement may not apply to individual or foreign entity trademark owners.&
2	Search results indicating non-use of the trademark in question from at least three (3) different platforms, e.g. comprehensive online platforms and industry websites for the goods/services covered by the trademark, such as search engines, e-commerce sites, and social media; and the search results should include screenshots of five (5) consecutive search result pages starting from the home page, for each platform.	Compared to previous practice, namely that the applicant only needs to submit some minimal online search results, the new requirements impose a minimum quantity requirement for the evidence to be gathered. For online platforms, it is recommended that the applicants conduct the searches through the main search engines (like Baidu, Bing and Sogo), online shopping platforms (like Taobao, JD, Tmall and Pinduoduo) and social media platforms (like WeChat, Douyin, Little Red Book and Weibo).
3	If the business status of the trademark owner is marked as “in operation”, an investigation report and supporting evidence from the business or office premises where the goods and/or services are provided must be submitted.	This is a comparatively new requirement, which may substantially increase the burden for the applicant. More clarifications and guidance are necessary, for example, does the applicant need to run a full-fledged investigation (like in Hong Kong) through professional investigators or would a preliminary onsite verification by the applicant or entrusted third party suffice? Probably having already consideredthe potential impact and burden on the applicant, this kind of evidence has not been commonly required by CNIPA in the OAs issued so far.

It is already clear that CNIPA has raised the bar for the formality examination of non-use cancellations by raising the burden of prima facie evidence submitted by the applicants. This results in a redistribution of the burden of proof to a certain extent, thereby aiming to curb frivolous or malicious filings.

In the meantime, it is important to note that so far, CNIPA has not yet issued formal written guidance or regulations officially revising the evidentiary requirements for non-use cancellation applications. The change in practice therefore appears only to be based on an internal CNIPA policy change, as illustrated by individual OAs issued by CNIPA to certain trademark owners and their agents.

It is also not yet clear whether CNIPA has applied the new criteria substantially to all applicants that have filed non-use cancellations over the past few months. This means that the exact updated requirements for filing non-use cancellation applications are not yet crystal-clear and may vary between examiners.

Next steps

In response to CNIPA’s recent change in practice, applicants for non-use cancellations should now proceed more prudently and strategically. Specifically:

Applicants should aim to file the evidence under numbers 1 and 2 above together with the non-use cancellation application to ensure that the application is accepted and to avoid a potential OA. It may not be necessary to run a fully-fledged onsite investigation (i.e. the evidence under number 3 above) specifically for the purpose of the non-use cancellation at the initial filing stage. However, if necessary, applicants may conduct the investigation and supplement the evidence under number 3 above in response to a potential OA.
It is also advisable for applicants to avoid batch-filings of non-use cancellations against a single trademark owner within a short period of time, as well as repetitive filings against the same trademark within 3 years after it survives a prior non-use cancellation, as this may raise suspicions of bad faith.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations. Attorney Advertising.