Business Question 

If a trademark that preemptively registered your brand has already cleared the two-month opposition window and proceeded to registration, many companies' first reaction is to ask whether there is any way forward at all.

There is. The opposition period having lapsed does not mean every avenue of relief has closed — but the company is no longer choosing between a single path. It now faces invalidation, non-use cancellation, or pursuing both at once. This installment sets out to answer directly: once a problematic mark has already been registered, what logic should a company use to determine which path is genuinely the fastest?

  Legal Update 

Chapter VI (Articles 50 through 53) governs the invalidation of registered trademarks. This is the first time the chapter has stood on its own, separated from the formerly combined “trademark review” chapter, with a clear structural distinction from the opposition and review procedures.

Article 50 sets out the absolute grounds for invalidation: where a registered trademark violates Article 15 (absolute grounds for refusal), the first paragraph of Article 16 (geographical names), Articles 17 through 19 (distinctiveness, functionality, bad-faith applications), or Article 25 (restrictions on an agency's own filings), the trademark administration department under the State Council may declare it invalid on its own initiative, and any other entity or individual may also request a declaration of invalidity. These grounds are not subject to any time limit.

Article 51 sets out the relative grounds for invalidation: where a registered trademark violates Articles 20 through 22 (similarity, well-known trademark protection, bad-faith filings by agents), the first paragraph of Article 23 (geographical indications), or Article 24 (protection of prior use), a prior right holder or interested party may request a declaration of invalidity within five years from the date of registration; but for bad-faith registrations, a well-known trademark holder is not subject to the five-year limit.

Article 53 also addresses the retroactive effect of an invalidation: infringement judgments already enforced, and assignment or licensing contracts already performed, are not, as a general rule, overturned by a subsequent invalidation — unless the registrant acted in bad faith. This provision is better understood as a reminder that invalidation does not mean wiping the slate entirely clean, rather than a core factor companies should weigh when choosing between paths — we explain its actual role in the analysis below.

  Practical Analysis 

The differing treatment of time limits under Articles 50 and 51 reflects a distinction between two different kinds of problems. Absolute grounds for invalidation go to the basic order of the trademark system itself, and do not become “acceptable” with the passage of time. Relative grounds involve a conflict between private rights, where the law has to balance giving prior rights holders enough time to discover a problem against avoiding leaving a registrant's rights perpetually unsettled — five years is where that balance has been struck.

What genuinely warrants a company's attention is the exception for bad-faith registration, under which a well-known trademark holder is not bound by the five-year limit. For a bad-faith registration case meeting the relevant conditions, the five-year period need not be an absolute legal obstacle — but time still meaningfully increases the cost of gathering evidence and managing market impact. The longer a preemptive registration has stood, the more likely the other party has built up some history of use, and the more complicated the evidence picture, the scope of market confusion, and even the other party's own commercial arrangements are likely to have become. This exception offers the certainty that a legal remedy still exists — not the comfort that waiting longer carries no cost.

As for the retroactive-effect exception under Article 53, its real function is to mark the boundary of what invalidation accomplishes: a declaration of invalidity corrects the error of a mark that should never have been registered, but that correction does not unwind commercial arrangements that occurred, and were reasonably relied upon, before the declaration. The practical takeaway for a company choosing between paths is this: if the company's core objective is simply to clear the mark itself, the retroactive-effect exception is unlikely to pose an obstacle; but if the company's objective also touches on transactions that have already occurred on the basis of that mark, this boundary needs to be factored into expectations — invalidation should not be assumed to unwind everything as though it had never happened.

  Practical Impact 

With this boundary in mind, the judgment a company actually needs to make comes down to three questions: first, is the goal to clear a mark that is blocking the way, or to challenge the legitimacy of the registration itself? Second, is the other party's mark actually in use? Third, does the company already hold evidence of well-known status or prior rights, or evidence that the other party has not used the mark?

These three questions point naturally toward different paths. If the goal is simply to clear an unused obstacle mark as quickly as possible, non-use cancellation is usually the path worth evaluating first — the evidentiary burden is comparatively straightforward, centered on proving non-use, and the proceeding is typically faster. If the goal is to challenge the legitimacy of a bad-faith registration, address market confusion or harm that has already occurred, or block the other party from using the registration to assert claims against the company itself, invalidation is usually the more necessary path — because non-use cancellation only takes the mark out of force going forward; it cannot reach back to address bad faith that existed at the time of registration. Where the evidence allows, both paths can also be pursued at once, applying procedural and substantive pressure on the problem mark simultaneously, rather than treating the two as mutually exclusive options.

Consider an example: a brand discovers that an entity with no prior business relationship preemptively registered a mark closely similar to its well-known trademark five years ago; the mark remains registered but appears never to have been put to actual use. Applying the three questions above: if the company's core objective is simply to invalidate the mark quickly and clear the way for its own future filings, non-use cancellation is the more direct route. If the company also wants to pursue damages for the market confusion that has already occurred, or is concerned the other party might turn around and assert the registration against it, only invalidation genuinely resolves that layer of the problem — in which case, even though cancellation might produce a faster result, it may not actually satisfy what the company is really after.

  GreRoyalt Observation 

In handling invalidation and non-use cancellation matters, we have noticed that the difficulty in many cases lies not in whether a remedy exists, but in the fact that different remedies are built to serve different objectives: invalidation addresses whether the registration itself was legitimate; non-use cancellation addresses whether the mark should remain on the register at all. Because the objectives differ, what counts as the “fastest path” differs too — a procedure that is objectively quicker is not necessarily the one best suited to the case at hand.

This is also why we tend to suggest that companies first clarify what outcome they are actually seeking, and only then evaluate procedure — rather than assuming, by default, that invalidation must be the preferred option simply because it sounds more thorough.

  Points to Consider 

?  Is the other party's mark currently in use, or has it sat dormant for an extended period?

?  Is the evidence your company currently holds better suited to proving the other party has not used the mark, or to proving the registration itself was unlawful or made in bad faith?

?  If invalidation is ultimately the chosen path, has the mark already been the subject of an assignment, license, or related litigation that warrants assessing the retroactive-effect exception in advance?

In the next installment: “Can ‘Gimmick Trademarks’ Still Slip Through? Commercial Confusion Enters a New Era of Regulation” — examining the full-chain regulation of bad-faith applications and misleading use under the new Law, and the practical impact of the new trademark licensing recordal rules.

This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice for any specific matter. Please consult qualified counsel regarding your particular circumstances.