# Your Chinese-character mark is a separate filing A Latin-letter registration does not automatically cover a Chinese-character brand name. Why a second filing may be needed and what it costs. Canonical URL: https://ginbing.com/blog/china-trademark-chinese-character-name Markdown URL: https://ginbing.com/blog/china-trademark-chinese-character-name/index.md ## TLDR A Chinese-character brand name is a separate mark. A Latin-letter filing does not automatically protect it. ## Post A Latin-letter registration in China does not automatically extend to a Chinese-character version of the brand. If the business adopts or is given a Chinese name, protecting that version normally requires evaluating and filing the characters themselves. ## A Latin-letter registration does not cover the Chinese version A China trademark registration protects the specific mark you filed. If you filed your brand in Latin letters, that is what you hold. It does not automatically extend to a Chinese-character version of the same brand, even when the Chinese name sounds like yours or means the same thing. Chinese characters are a different mark, and Chinese trademark practice treats them as a separate filing. Chinese consumers, distributors, resellers, or media may adopt a Chinese name even when the company initially uses only Latin letters. Sometimes the company chooses it. Sometimes the market settles on a transliteration first. A business should decide deliberately whether that name is part of the brand it wants to file. Conflicts can involve sound, meaning, appearance, and the goods or services covered. Evaluating a Chinese-character name therefore requires checking the actual characters and relevant marks, not assuming the Latin-letter registration settles the question. ## The market will name your brand if you do not China is generally first-to-file, and that timing risk also applies to a Chinese-character name. An earlier application by a distributor or bad-faith filer can create a dispute over the name customers associate with the brand. The damage is practical. You can own the Latin-letter mark cleanly and still find that the name printed on Chinese product labels, used in Chinese ads, and typed into Chinese marketplaces belongs to someone else. Recovering it runs through CNIPA opposition or invalidation, which is slow, costly, and never certain. Choosing your own Chinese name and filing it early is the cheaper move, the same logic that applies to filing your brand at all. See [how the first-to-file system works](/docs/china-trademark/first-to-file). ## A Chinese mark is a real branding and legal decision There is no single correct Chinese name. In practice, foreign brands arrive at one through some mix of three routes: - **Transliteration**: characters chosen to sound like the original name. - **Translation**: characters that carry the meaning of the original name. - **A new name**: characters built for the Chinese market that need not track the original sound or meaning at all. Each route has trade-offs, and the characters matter beyond branding. Chinese characters carry meaning, and homonyms are common, so a name that sounds right can read wrong. Not every transliteration or translation is even available to register, because CNIPA reviews Chinese-character marks against its own criteria. This is where the work stops being a clean filing question. Which characters to choose, whether they are registrable, and whether they collide with an existing Chinese mark are decisions about the specific brand, not defaults Ginbing can select. Do not have a name machine-translated and assume it is safe to use. Character choice carries legal and reputational risk, and a name that is taken, refused, or unfortunate in meaning is expensive to unwind after you have built around it. Use a qualified China trademark attorney for the naming and conflict decision before committing to the characters. ## Two marks means two applications Because the Latin-letter mark and the Chinese-character mark are separate marks, each is its own application. Filing the Chinese version does not modify or extend your existing registration. It is a new filing in its own right. That has a direct cost. Ginbing files [China trademark registration](/china-trademark-registration) at USD 150 per class, including the CNIPA filing fee and up to 10 goods or services items in that class. A separate Chinese-character mark is a separate application, so the same USD 150 per class applies again for it. If you file both marks across the same classes, plan on the per-class price for each mark. The classes themselves are the same system either way. The mark changes; the class structure does not. If you are still settling which classes cover what you sell in China, read [trademark classes and items](/docs/china-trademark/classes) first, then decide whether to file the Chinese-character mark in the same classes. ## How to decide You do not always need both marks on day one, but you should decide deliberately rather than by default. A short way to think about it: - If you sell, ship, or market under a name your Chinese customers will read in Chinese, assume you need a Chinese-character mark eventually, and earlier is safer than later. - If a Chinese name for your brand is already circulating in the market, treat registering it as urgent, before someone else files it. - Use the characters selected through the naming and conflict review, not a quick translation. Filing itself is the part Ginbing handles. When you know which marks and classes you want, [start a China trademark filing](/china-trademark-registration). The filing can start after the characters and classes are settled.