New Edition of Classification of Goods and Services for Trademark Registration in Force on 1 January 2012
The State Administration for Industry & Commerce of the PRC (SAIC) recently announced that with the introduction of the tenth edition of International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on 1 January 2012, China as a member country will implement the revised Classification accordingly. As such, applications for trademark registration with the Chinese Trademark Office (CTMO) of SAIC on or after 1 January 2012 shall refer to said new edition of classification in specifying the class of goods or services to which the applications relate.
According to SAIC's announcement, the applicants may now start using the names of goods and services in the tenth edition of classification when filing trademark applications with the CTMO. The applicants, however, are advised to note that there may be uncertainty at this stage as regards which subdivisions the goods and services involving the changes fall under and the scopes of protection covered, as CTMO is still incorporating their names into its Classification Table of Similar Goods and Services, a reference table created by CTMO based on WIPO's international classification for examination of trademark applications in China.
SAIC also announced the amendments and additions against the ninth edition of classification as adopted by the Committee of Experts of the Nice Union at its twenty-first session.
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