Trademark registrations in China in 2017 exceed 5 million, reaching 5.748 million, increasing 55.7%. The application and increasement hit a historical high record. The growth rate of trademark applications reached 20% in 2014 and sustained the number around the level of 20%-30%. Significantly, China's trademark application saw an explosive growth of 55.7% in 2017. By the end of 2017, China trademark applications accumulatively reached 27.842 million, and registrations accumulatively reached 17.301 million, registrations still in force reached 14.92 million, ranking number 1 in the world for consecutively 17 years. Each 10 thousand market entities registered 1520 effective trademarks, a remarkable increasement compared with the figure of 1074 in 2011. Trademark protections were enhanced comprehensively. In 2017, AIC and Market Supervision departments focused on well known trademarks, geographical indications, foreign marks, time honoured brands to strengthen trademark rights protection. About 30 thousands illegal cases investigated by the whole departments, reducing 5.1% compared with previous year. Trademark infringement cases reached 27000, reducing 4.3% compared with the previous year

 

Generally, the developed districts, like Guangdong and other representative coastal cities, applied more trademarks than the developing districts, such as the western districts. Guangdong province tops the list with 8,313,520,000 applications, followed by Zhejiang province (413, 043), Beijing (369,382), Jiangsu (269,385) and Shanghai (267,097). It is the first time that Zhejiang province surpassed Beijing in this number. All the trademark applications filed in the above 5 districts holds more than half of the total number in China in 2017. 89% provinces or cities saw a growth, among which the Tibet Autonomous Region had the biggest increase of 80.04%; Hong Kong (49.40%), Jiangxi (37.69%), Anhui (37.47%) and Jilin (28.87%) also achieved progress. It is worth noting that Beijing unexpectedly decreased 4.67%, becoming one of the three districts with lower applications than 2016

In 2017, the top 5 trademark classifications are: Class 3 5 (Advertising, Business Consulting, 497,323), Class 25 (Clothing, Footwear and Headgear, 441,246), Class 30 (Foods - Spices, Bakery Goods, Ice, Confectionery, 269,651), Class 9 (Computers, Software, Electronic instruments, & Scientific appliances, 260,981) and Class 43 (Services for providing food and drink; temporary accommodations, 211,593). The Class 25 take the lead in the trademark applications with a 61.35% growth. From Jan-Oct, 2017, the top 10 Chinese characters that China filed most trademarks for are “家”, “ 美”, “天”, “乐”, “ 宝”, “金”, “ 中 ”, “一 ”, “生 ”, “品 ”, most of them contains good wishes, expectations for people's life, dream, family etc. At the same time, the top 10 letters China filed most trademarks for are E, A, I, O, N, R, S, T, L, C, through which professionals found that applicants prefer sonorous letters.

  In 2017, the top enterprises applying for the most trademarks are Beijing Fangyuan Herui Cultural Investment Company (4,892), Alibaba Group (4,849), Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (4,311), Guangzhou Zangzhi Brand Management Co., Ltd. (4,025), Caigang Technology Co., Ltd. (3,488), Shenzhen Xinya Technology Co., Ltd. (3,431).

 

 The World's 500 Most Influential Brands issued by World Brand Lab in 2017 shows that 37 Chinese brands were included in the list, increasing 1.5 times compared with that of 2013. State Grid tops the 37 Chinese brands with the rank of 32, up 4 places than 2016. Innovative enterprises occupies certain positions for the Chinese brands, like Tencent, Huawei, Alibaba etc. The three companies respectively rose 7 places from No.43 to No.36; rose 17 places from No.81 to No.64; and rose 190 places from No.264 to No.74.

According to the report of WIPO, U.S.-based applicants (7,884) filed the largest number of international trademark applications using WIPO's Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks in 2017, closely followed by those located in Germany (7,316), China (5,230), France (4,261) and the U.K. (3,292). Among the top 15 origins, China saw the fastest growth (+36.3%), followed by the Russian Federation (+23.9%), the Republic of Korea (+9.8%) and the U.K. (+9.3%). Both China and the Russian Federation recorded their second consecutive year of double-digit growth. In contrast, Austria (-4.9%), Italy (-6.6%) and the Netherlands (-5.8%) each saw a drop in filings.