On February 14, the National Intellectual Property Administration issued the Notice of Cracking Down on Malicious Registration of Trademarks Free-riding Olympic Stars and Mascots. In its recent action, CNIPA rejected 429 applications for trademark registration of "冰墩墩" and "谷爱凌" according to law, and invalidated 43 registered trademarks with characters or symbols of "雪墩墩" and "谷爱凌".

CNIPA attached great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, and had carried out special actions against malicious trademark registration. It also granted special logo protection to "北京2022" characters, the emblem of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the emblem of Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics, and trademark registration protection has also been given to "冰墩墩" and "雪容融" applied by Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, as well as the names and trademarks of Winter Olympic athletes such as "谷爱凌" applied by other qualified subjects.

However, since 2019, enterprises and natural persons had kept seeking improper benefits through malicious squatting of Winter Olympic hot words such as mascots and athletes' names of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics, entrusting agency to submit application for trademark registration, taking advantage of the reputation of the Olympic Games and the Olympic Organizing Committee illegally, and infringing on the name rights and other legitimate rights and interests of others, which produced great adverse effects to society and damaged China’s good image in its effort of protecting intellectual property rights.

In this regard, CNIPA resolutely cracked down and rejected 429 trademark registration applications, such as "冰墩墩" (No.41128524) and "谷爱凌" (No.62453532) according to the Regulations on the Protection of Olympic Symbols and Article 10.1.8 of the Trademark Law, and invalidated 43 registered trademarks such as "雪墩墩" (No.41126916) and "谷爱凌" (No.38770198).