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Battles in India as China Enacts Pre-Registration Scrutiny
For South Korean skincare company , entering the Indian market turned into a multi-year legal ordeal. Despite having built the ‘Beauty of Joseon’ brand into a global success over a decade, it found its trademark already registered by a squatter who had never sold a single product. The eventually cancelled the registration in on grounds of under . But the company was back in court in seeking against imitators, with the court also directing to take down infringing listings. This case underscores a systemic vulnerability in India’s trademark regime—one that China is now addressing head-on with sweeping reforms set to take effect on .
The Squatter’s Playbook
is no longer an occasional abuse of intellectual property law; it has evolved into a profitable business model. Inexpensive online filing systems, the rapid expansion of digital commerce, and the lag between building a brand online and formally registering it have created fertile ground for speculators. These filers register marks they never intend to use, then demand payment from the rightful owner or force them into protracted litigation. As the observed in , registering a mark with no intention of using it, purely to block or extract money from its rightful owner, constitutes —and is .
The cost to legitimate businesses is staggering: not the modest fee a squatter pays to file first, but years spent in rectification petitions and fresh suits. ’s case is a stark illustration. It took a full to cancel the squatter’s registration, and even then, the company had to return to court to stop continued misuse of its .
China’s Administrative Gatekeeping
China’s newly revised , passed by the in and due to take effect on , represents a fundamental shift in approach. The reform treats as an administrative problem to be caught at the gate, rather than a private dispute to be sorted out in court afterward.
Under the new law, an application filed with no real intention of using the mark, in a way that clearly exceeds what the applicant’s own business could reasonably need, can be refused at the examination stage itself—before it ever reaches the register. Examiners can issue an asking the applicant to produce evidence of actual or intended use. If the response is insufficient, the mark is refused without being published for . The window has also been shortened to two months, and the grounds for opposing a bad-faith filing have been widened.
Where is established and causes real harm, the applicant faces a fine of up to CNY 100,000. Agencies that knowingly assist such filings can be fined up to CNY 200,000 in serious cases and may be barred from practising before the trademark office altogether. For marks that slip through, the revised law lifts the usual for challenging a registration when the challenger holds a and the registration was obtained in —acknowledging that some only becomes obvious years later.
The reform also widens what counts as . Copying, imitating, or translating someone else’s for unrelated goods is now , even if that mark was never registered in China. The same applies to agents, distributors, and business partners who file a principal’s mark in their own name. And the category of “” is extended to cover data rights, virtual property, and the commercial use of a character’s image or a work’s title.
The Indian Framework: Waiting for Damage to Be Done
India’s examines applications on under , but nothing in the examination process asks whether the applicant actually intends to use the mark. becomes relevant only once someone opposes the application, or, if the mark slips through, once the rightful owner files a under . Even the one built-in check on hoarding—removal for under —cannot be invoked until a mark has sat unused on the register for five years and three months.
The result is a system that waits for the damage to be done and then asks the injured party to undo it. With the receiving over 5.5 lakh applications in alone and contested matters taking roughly a year just to get a hearing listed, the burden on legitimate brand owners is immense. India has also crossed two lakh -recognised start-ups, alongside millions of MSMEs that increasingly build a brand online before they open a single store. Filing a trademark today takes minutes and costs little, and filing dozens under one name across unrelated classes with no business behind any of it costs barely more. The Registry has no equivalent of China’s threshold question—whether a portfolio corresponds to any real business need—so a filing pattern that would draw scrutiny in Beijing sails through in Delhi.
Lessons for Indian Brand Owners
The contrast between the two regimes is stark. China’s reform does not depend on the original owner noticing the theft, hiring counsel, and fighting it out over several years. The examiner does the first round of filtering. That is the real shift: treating as an administrative problem caught at the gate, not a private dispute litigated afterward.
For Indian legal professionals, the case and the China comparison highlight several takeaways. First, proactive monitoring of trademark filings is essential. Second, the existing mechanisms—, rectification, removal—must be used aggressively, but they remain reactive and costly. Third, there is a strong case for legislative reform: introducing a at the examination stage, empowering examiners to request evidence of business activity, and using filing data to flag suspicious portfolios. The Registry already holds the data needed to identify applicants who repeatedly register marks resembling existing brands or hold large portfolios with no matching commercial activity. Using that data at the examination stage could catch the problem at a fraction of the cost of a three years later.
Conclusion: A Call for Pre-Grant Scrutiny
is a tax on innovation. It rewards speculators at the expense of genuine entrepreneurs and burdens the judicial system with disputes that could have been prevented. China’s 2027 reforms show that a well-designed administrative filter can stop bad-faith filings before they cause harm. India would do well to study that model. As the has repeatedly held, is —but the law should not wait for a court to say so. It should stop the squatter at the door.
