Why choose HainanInc?
Continuous watch, not a one-time filing
Opposition windows tracked to the day they open
One team across clearance, filing, and monitoring
How a trademark engagement runs
- 01
Clearance Search
A search across the relevant classes — including the Chinese-character and transliterated forms of your marks — to check what is already registered before you file.
- 02
Filing Strategy
Classification strategy covering the classes your business operates in and the adjacent ones a squatter is most likely to target.
- 03
Registration
Filing and prosecution through to registration, plus licence and assignment recordals where the register needs to reflect who holds the mark.
- 04
Watch & Opposition
Continuous monitoring of newly published applications against your portfolio, with opposition recommendations delivered while the statutory window is still open.
Trademark Registration
Clearance searches, classification strategy, and filing across the relevant classes for your marks in China.
Defensive Portfolio Strategy
Coverage analysis and defensive filings in adjacent classes and transliterations before others claim them.
Watch and Opposition Monitoring
Continuous monitoring of new applications with documented opposition recommendations inside statutory windows.
Licence and Assignment Recordal
Recordal of trademark licences and assignments with the trademark authority, so the register reflects who actually holds and licenses the mark.
China operates a first-to-file trademark system: rights generally belong to whoever registers first, not whoever used the mark first abroad. For an inbound brand, the most expensive mistake available is arriving with commercial momentum and discovering the name already belongs to someone else.
A defensible position starts with clearance and classification strategy — including the Chinese-character and transliterated forms of your marks that third parties are most likely to register opportunistically — and continues with filings in the classes where your business actually operates and the adjacent ones where squatters do.
Registration is the beginning rather than the end. Our watch service reviews newly published applications against your portfolio and puts opposition recommendations in front of you while the statutory window is still open, when acting costs hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands.
This engagement covers trademarks. Patent and design-right prosecution is a separately licensed profession in China with its own qualification requirements, and contentious enforcement — litigation or administrative action against an infringer — is work for qualified counsel. We do not hold ourselves out for either; where a matter turns into one, we say so and help you brief the right firm rather than carrying it further ourselves.
Related insights
Hainan Legislated Against Bad-Faith Trademark Filings. Here Is What It Reaches
The Free Trade Port's intellectual property regulations penalise bad-faith applications, provide for punitive damages and feed a serious-dishonesty list. None of that helps a brand that filed second.
Transliterated and Chinese-Character Marks: An Overlooked Exposure for Foreign Brands
Foreign brands entering China often register their Latin-script mark and stop there. The exposure that follows usually comes from the transliterated or Chinese-character version nobody filed.
Related services
Employer of Record (EOR) and Payroll
Compliant local employment through a licensed dispatch provider, with payroll and statutory benefits coordinated by one team — before, or instead of, forming your own entity.
Relocation and Soft Landing
End-to-end logistical support for executives and families relocating, from housing introductions to schooling and banking access.
Our services
Our practice areas cover the whole life of a foreign-owned presence in Hainan — from the feasibility assessment made before anything is filed, through formation and licensing, payroll, tax and ongoing compliance, to the deregistration that closes an entity properly — alongside the Free Trade Port incentives that are the reason to be here rather than anywhere else in China. One engagement model means a single accountable team across all of them.
