The National Intellectual Property Administration made a penalty decision of permanently stopping the trademark attorney business of a company in Jiangsu and stopping attorney operation of a company in Guangzhou for 12 months.

After investigation, the accused company of Jiangsu (hereinafter referred to as Company A) started to engage in trademark attorney business after being registered by the Trademark Office on April 1, 2017, and applied for registered trademarks in the name of three affiliated companies and transferred them for profit. From January 2018 to March 2020, Company A handled 803 trademark registration applications of the above three companies (109 trademark registration applications were submitted after November 1, 2019), including many trademarks that are the same as or similar to others, which have obvious intention of copying other people's trademarks, and said registration have been denied or partially rejected by the CNIPA. However, the 2018 Annual Report and 2019 Annual Report of the above three companies show that the companies only had 1-2 employees, who had conducted zero declaration and gain negative net profit, nor had they carried out any business activities. In order to avoid the stipulation that trademark attorney companies cannot apply for registration of trademarks other than trademark attorney services, in the process of engaging in trademark attorney business, the Company A squatted trademarks previously used by others and having certain influence in the name of three affiliated companies, engaged in malicious registration of trademarks of non-use-intent, which violates the principle of good faith, and belongs to the illegal acts as stipulated in Article 19.3 and Article 19.4 of the Trademark Law. The above-mentioned illegal acts of Company A have obvious subjective malice, which results a large number of malicious trademark registrations after a long period of operation, which seriously disrupt the order of trademark registration management. According to Article 68.1.3 and Article 68.2 of the Trademark Law and Article 90 of the Implementing Regulations of the Trademark Law, the court decided to permanently stop Company A for engaging in trademark attorney business. 

 to investigation, the other company, Guangzhou International Brand Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Company B), had helped many clients with registration under the same name and registered trademarks under other parties’ names. As of May 20, 2020, Company B has handled 1,059 trademark registration applications belonging to 190 trademark registrants, of which 58 meet the following situations: applicants submit registration applications for the same or similar trademarks on the same goods by registering companies with the same names as the exclusive owners of registered trademarks in Colorado, USA, London, UK and Hong Kong, China. Its behavior interferes with the normal progress of trademark examination, and has at the same time caused a serious impact on prior companies, which belongs to the case of "disturbing the order of trademark agency market by other improper means" and "serious circumstances" in Article 68.1.2 of the Trademark Law. According to Article 68.1.2 and Article 68.2 of the Trademark Law, Rule 90.1 and Rule 90.2 of the Implementing Regulations of the Trademark Law, CNIPA decided to stop Company B from operating trademark attorney business for 12 months, and make an announcement on the official website.