By Michael Li
China’s National Intellectual Property Administration published details of its Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for Patent and Trademark Examination on November 3, 2026. The plan identifies improvements to trademark examination rules, examination capacity, quality and efficiency, alongside broader international cooperation and technology-related initiatives.
For foreign brand owners, the announcement signals the direction of examination policy. It does not establish a newly guaranteed registration timetable for individual trademark applications.
The plan sets objectives extending to 2030 and identifies four main areas of work: patent examination, trademark examination, international cooperation and examination capacity.
Seven special projects are included, among them trademark examination quality improvement and the application of artificial intelligence to examination.
The published summary should be read as a programme of institutional development. Individual changes to filing practice, examination standards or procedures require assessment against the specific rules and implementation documents subsequently issued.
CNIPA’s 2024 Annual Report records approximately 6.675 million trademark applications examined during that year. It reports an average trademark examination period of four months, with registration taking seven months under general circumstances.
These are historical performance indicators. They should not be converted into a contractual promise about the completion date of a new application.
Examination and completed registration are also different stages. A business assessing its launch schedule needs to understand which milestone a quoted processing period describes.
The commercial value of an application depends on more than processing speed.
Before committing to packaging, distribution or a market launch, applicants should review the proposed mark, ownership details and goods or services to be covered. Where both English and Chinese names will be used, the filing strategy should address the protection required for each version.
This issue is discussed further in our analysis of Chinese brand-name protection.
From a planning perspective, businesses should separate three decisions:
Whether the proposed branding has been adequately assessed.
Which applications are appropriate for the intended activities.
Which commercial commitments depend on obtaining particular registration outcomes.
A policy announcement about improved examination capacity does not resolve those business-specific questions.
Applicants and advisers should monitor subsequent CNIPA publications for concrete changes to examination practice and administrative procedures.
Internal filing calendars should be updated when an applicable change is confirmed, rather than solely because a new planning document has been announced.
The same discipline applies to communications with distributors and investors: distinguish an expected administrative timeframe from a confirmed registration outcome.
The published summary does not announce a generally available expedited route for all trademark applicants.
No. They are indicators reported for 2024 and describe different procedural milestones.
The announcement alone is not a sufficient reason to postpone. Filing decisions should reflect the brand, intended activities, existing rights and commercial timetable.
IPcrossark provides China trademark services, including enquiries relating to searches and applications.
Applicants can provide their proposed marks, product or service list, existing filing records and intended markets so that the relevant service scope can be clarified.
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