The China National Intellectual Property Administration ("CNIPA") recently circulated the Special Action Plan for Cracking down on Malicious Preemptive Trademark Registration (the "Plan") to centrally carry out a special action against the act of malicious preemptive trademark registration from March 2021.

According to the Plan, the special action will focus on acts including malicious and preemptive registration of trademarks, seeking illegal benefits, disrupting the order of trademark registration and administration and causing relatively major adverse social influences, which can be divided into 10 types, such as "maliciously and preemptively registering the name of any major national or regional strategy, major event, major policy, key projects or key technological project as a trademark". The Plan also makes clear five measures, such as enhancing targeted crackdown and adopting comprehensive strategies. For example, it is required to include the records of administrative punishment against malicious preemptive trademark registration into the national public credit information directory as well as the credit file, to take more severe measures to crack down on the malicious preemptive trademark registration by trademark agencies, and to suspend their license for trademark agency business in case of serious circumstances.

(Source: China National Intellectual Property Administration)