On 29th of December, 2017, Mr. Zhang Mao, Commissioner of China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC) delivered a keynote speech at the National AIC & Market Supervision Conference, unveiling some statistics in 2017 and the agency's new initiatives on trademark practice in 2018.

In 2017, the SAIC has been beefing up efforts in facilitating trademark registration procedure. Measuresthathavebeen taken include:
● Optimizing trademark examination and adjudication procedure;
● Setting up 3 trademark examination cooperation centers in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing and opening 105 trademark application acceptance offices nationwide;
● Extending trademark e-filing practice to cover more procedures;
● Expediting trademark examination and review of refusal procedure within an average of 8 months;
● Launching an online searchable database to make all the TRAB decisions available to the public; and

● Conducting oral hearing for trademark review and adjudication cases.

In respect of trademark practice, the agency sets out a list of new initiatives in 2018:
● Researching smart graphic search technique;
● Launching a smart examination auxiliary system, e-filing system for trademark review and adjudication procedure and a new trademark registration and  administration OA system;
● Relaxing the accreditation of trademark application acceptance offices;
● Boosting the examination capacity of the trademark examination cooperation centers;
● Furthering the open data initiative by making all the trademark data available to the public by the year end;
● Strengthening collaboration between trademark examination, opposition and review & adjudication divisions and the judiciary to stem bad-faith trademark filing;
● Taking harsher action against trademark infringement acts, in particular those offences involving well-known trademarks, geographical indications, foreign trademarks, as well as registered trademarks of time-honored brands;

● Promoting interdepartmental and cross-regional collaboration on trademark supervision and enforcement and enhancing case transferring mechanism with the public security organs and the judiciary.

A few new objectives are also set:
● Examination of trademark application →within 6 months
● Issuance of filing receipt → within 1 month
● Blind trademark search period → within 2 months
● Trademark assignment → within 4 months
● Trademark renewal and modification of trademark application/registration → within 2 months
● Trademark review of refusal → within 7 months.