Under China’s Trade Mark Law, if a registered trade mark has not been used for three consecutive years without a legitimate reason, then any third party can file a non-use cancellation against the registration.

Given that the law does not require such a cancellation to be filed by a party with an interest in the target registration, for many years, and in practice, Chinese non-use cancellations have often been filed by individuals with no apparent relationship to or interest in the registration. One of the obvious reasons to deploy such an unrelated individual is that one mark owner (with the real interest in the cancellation) can sever the “link” back to themselves, reducing the risk of a counterattack by the owner of registration under cancellation.

Since the threshold for filing non-use cancellations is lower than many other proceedings, for some years this has been one of the most attractive tools in the belt of brand owners looking to attack competing marks. However this has also meant a large number of non-use cancellations have been filed before the Chinese IPO (CNIPA) in the past several years; and perhaps unsurprisingly, an increasing number of those cancellations have been filed with some bad faith motive behind them.

In early 2025, CNIPA appears to have shifted its practice and is now requiring that cancellation applicants disclose the “actual petitioner” behind cancellation actions.  It has also started requiring cancellation applicants to disclose whether there is a matter related to the action (such as a trade mark application that has been refused based on the challenged registration); as well as adjusting the requirements for evidence of non-use that must be brought in order for a cancellation to succeed.

CNIPA is still exploring a better solution for solving these problems, but unfortunately it’s a case of “watch this space”, as there is no official guidance or requirements in place. For the time being therefore, trade mark cancellation applicants must brace themselves to be required to disclose who is actually behind any particular non-use cancellation they bring.