China’s Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB) has launched an online searchable database on December 28, 2017, making its decisions available to public, according to an announcement released by TRAB on December 14, 2017.

It is the furthering of an earlier TRAB initiative in publishing every month decisions selected at random, since December 2016.

The purpose of the database is to make a greater number of TRAB decisions available to the public, to increase transparency. Decisions will be published on the site within 20 workdays following delivery to the parties.

In general, publishable decisions will be those instruments rendered to conclude a review or adjudication procedure, including:

● Decision on review of refusal

● Decision on review of opposition
● Decision on declaration of invalidation
● Decision on review of invalidation declaration
● Decision on review of cancellation

However, the decision is NOT published, if it falls under any of the following circumstances:
● Where the party’s trade secret or personal privacy is involved;
● Where the party explicitly requests the non-disclosure of the decision and the TRAB finds such request reasonable;
● Where there is other peculiar circumstance that the TRAB finds inappropriate to publish the decision on the Internet.

According to TRAB Director Zhao Gang, as of November, the agency has accepted 182,400 cases, of which 154,700 cases concerns review of refusal (up 42.08% year on year) and the rest 27,600 cases concerns both parties (also known as “other cases”, up 20.50%) in 2017. Among these cases, 151,000 cases are concluded, including 128,700 reviews of refusal (up 53.75%) and 22,300 other cases (up 16.08%).

Contributors: Ms. QIN Huimin & Ms. JIANG Nan