Our Chinese distributor registered our trademark. How do we get it back?

A Chinese distributor that files its principal’s brand without authority can be stopped. China’s Supreme People’s Court treats a distributor as an agent for this rule, even one still negotiating. The owner can oppose the application, invalidate the registration within five years, cancel it after three years of non-use, or buy it back. No contested route hands the registration over.

You search the Chinese trademark register for your brand and find it, filed by the company that sells your goods in China. Perhaps it was presented as help. Perhaps nobody mentioned it. Either way the filing now sits ahead of any application you make, and every month it stays there moves you closer to a deadline.

The law has an answer written for this case. An agent that files its principal’s mark without authority is refused registration and barred from using it, if the principal objects, and the courts count a distributor as an agent.^⁠[1,2] The trademark office’s own published cases call such a filing 抢注 (pre-emptive registration).

What the law does not do is give you the filing. Every contested route ends the distributor’s registration, and the mark does not pass to you when it falls: you file your own application. Only a sale moves the existing registration into your name.

Does the law treat our distributor as our agent?

Yes, if it distributes or sells your goods under an arrangement with you. The agent rule (Trademark Law, Article 15) bars an agent or representative from registering its principal’s mark in its own name without authority.^⁠[1] Its text does not say “distributor”; that comes from the Supreme People’s Court, which reads “agent” to include a distributor or sales agent (经销、代理等销售代理关系). It applies the same rule to a filing made while the two sides were still negotiating.^⁠[2] Where the applicant is a relative of the distributor, or has a similar special tie to it, collusion may be presumed.

A second rule reaches anyone else you had a contract or business dealings with, if they knew of a mark you were already using. It needs proof of that earlier use, which the agent rule does not.^⁠[1] The court lists failed negotiations, employment, family ties and neighbouring premises as relationships that count.^⁠[2]

What happened when a former distributor’s company filed a foreign brand?

The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), which runs the trademark register, invalidated eight of its marks. An oil company sold PLATINUM lubricants in Asia through its Chinese subsidiary. A company whose affiliate had distributed those products registered eight 铂金 marks, the Chinese word for platinum.^⁠[3] CNIPA put together the oil company’s earlier Polish registration, its subsidiary’s website and the filer’s affiliated companies, and took the distribution relationship from a related case. It held the filings a pre-emptive registration by a party in a specific relationship (Article 15(2)).

It also found that the filer’s affiliate had applied for other lubricant brands and energy companies’ names, and invalidated on the second ground of improper means.^⁠[3] CNIPA published it as a typical case in May 2024. Its lesson for an owner: the record of the relationship (the agreement, the orders, the emails) is the case, and evidence from one dispute can carry another.

Which routes are open, and what does each cost?

Five, and the stage the distributor’s filing has reached decides which ones you can use. Official fees are low; the agency’s fee is charged on top and set by the agency. A foreign company with no place of business in China files any of these through a Chinese trademark agency.^⁠[4]

Route	When it is open	Official fee	Decision due	Result
Opposition异议	Three months from the date the application is published after preliminary examination (2019 Article 33); two months for marks published from 1 January 2027	RMB 450 / 500	12 months from the end of the publication period, extendable by 6	Not registered; on the agent ground, use is barred too
Invalidation, agent ground无效宣告	Within 5 years from the date of registration; no limit for a well-known mark against bad faith	RMB 675 / 750	12 months from receipt of the application, extendable by 6	Registration declared invalid
Invalidation, improper means	Any time, by anyone, where the registration was obtained by deception or other improper means	RMB 675 / 750	9 months from receipt, extendable by 3	Registration declared invalid
Non-use cancellation撤三	Once the mark has gone 3 consecutive years without use and without a proper reason; anyone may apply	RMB 450 / 500	9 months from receipt, extendable by 3	Registration cancelled
Assignment转让	Any time both sides sign an assignment agreement and apply together	RMB 450 / 500	On approval and publication	The registration becomes yours from the date of publication

Each decision can go further. After an invalidation ruling, either side has 30 days from receiving it to take it to court.^⁠[4] That is how a case that started at RMB 750 reaches its second year.

We found the application before it registered. What now?

Oppose it. As the principal you can raise the agent ground, and success both blocks the registration and bars the distributor from using the mark.^⁠[1] It is also the earliest point at which you can act.

Say a Danish kitchenware brand finds its Ningbo distributor’s application for the brand in class 21, published for opposition on 20 November 2026. Published before 1 January 2027, it has three months, until late February 2027. A court draft says that holds after New Year, and CNIPA’s own transitional rules are still a draft (see which law applies across 1 January 2027). CNIPA then has 12 months from the end of that period to decide, so until late February 2028, or late August 2028 if it extends.^⁠[1] The same mark published on 20 January 2027 would leave two months.

It is already registered. How long do we have?

Five years from the registration date, on the agent ground (Article 45).^⁠[1] The clock starts when the distributor’s mark registered, not when you found it. The revised law keeps the five years.^⁠[5]

Past five years, two routes remain. Where the filing was obtained by deception or other improper means, anyone may seek invalidation at any time; CNIPA used this ground in the PLATINUM case because the filer’s affiliate had collected other companies’ brands.^⁠[1,3] And a registration left unused for three consecutive years can be cancelled on anyone’s application. The distributor then has two months from CNIPA’s notice to show use made before the application.^⁠[7]

Non-use suits a filing the distributor holds in reserve, not one under which goods are still being sold.

What evidence does an invalidation need?

Proof of the relationship, proof that the mark is yours, and proof that you did not authorise the filing.^⁠[1] In practice that means the distribution agreement, purchase orders, invoices and correspondence, with your own registrations and dated use. Evidence not ready on the day can be added once, within three months of filing, if the application says so.^⁠[4]

Every document not in Chinese needs a Chinese translation, or CNIPA treats it as not submitted (Implementing Regulations, Article 6).^⁠[7] The rule asks for a translation, not a certified one. For a file built from years of English emails, it is still the slowest part, and a certified Chinese translation of the core documents is the step to schedule first.

Should we fight or buy it back?

It depends on the clock and on the relationship. An assignment is the only route that moves the existing registration to you. The two sides sign an assignment agreement and apply to CNIPA together, and you hold the right only from the day CNIPA publishes its approval; a signed agreement alone moves nothing.^⁠[1] The distributor must assign any similar marks on similar goods with it, or CNIPA tells it to put that right.^⁠[7] A contested route takes longer and ends the distributor’s mark, and then you file your own, behind any other filing made in the meantime.

The two are often run together: an opposition or invalidation filed on time keeps the deadline, and a negotiated assignment ends it. A commercial advice letter sets out those options against the money and the relationship. Who may register the brand belongs in the next distribution agreement, which the pre-signing contract check covers, and how brands are lost in the first place is in first to file and trademark squatting.

What changes for a distributor’s filing on 1 January 2027?

The rule keeps its words and changes its number. The agent rule moves to Article 22 of the revised law, word for word for both paragraphs, and the opposition window becomes two months.^⁠[5] Two things were still open on 5 October 2026.

• The court’s reading. A Supreme People’s Court draft of 14 September 2026 keeps the rule that a distributor is an agent and points it at Article 22. Comments close on 28 October 2026, and the adopted text may differ.^⁠[8]
• CNIPA’s transitional measures. Whether CNIPA applies the same three-month cut-off for marks published in 2026 is for its own transitional measures, still in draft (see the transition page).

Neither text adds a way to have the distributor’s registration transferred to you.^⁠[5] Getting it back still means ending it, or buying it. Trademark strategy and filing coordination starts with the dates each route depends on.

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