On March 23, 2022, the Trademark Office of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released a summary of statistics for 2021 in a document entitled 这些数字，让我们记住2021年！ Like the Patent Office of CNIPA cracking down on “irregular” patent applications, the TM Office rejected 482,000 trademark application for malicious registration not intended for use and preemptively rejected 1,628 malicious trademarks applications that harm social and public interests, and invalidated 1,729 registered trademarks ex officio. The preemptive rejections may be for Olympic-related marks such as for Olympic athlete and fashion model Eileen Gu.

Other statistics of note include:

• More than 2,200 front-line examiners have completed over 14 million trademark examinations throughout the year. Among them, the substantive examination of trademark registration applications exceeded 10.5682 million, a year-on-year increase of 20.31%; 61,343 substantive examinations of Madrid territorial extension applications were completed; and 170,100 opposition examinations were completed, a year-on-year increase of 12.5%.

• In 2021, the number of trademark registrations will reach 7.739 million, a year-on-year increase of 34.33%. Among them, 7.543 million domestic trademark registrations, accounting for 97.5% of the total; 194,000 foreign trademark registrations in China, accounting for 2.5% of the total.

• The average review period for trademark registration has been stabilized at 4 months, and the trademark registration period under normal circumstances has been shortened to 7 months by the end of 2021.

• In 2021, the Trademark Office received 5,928 new applications for international registration of Madrid trademarks, ranking third in the world in the Madrid Union. 

The full text of the release is available here (Chinese only).