The globalisation of Australian brands and why you need to register your Chinese trade mark application now

Malcolm McBratney, Alex Hutchens, Kellie Jukkola, Alexia Marinos

With more and more Australian companies entering the lucrative Chinese marketplace, it’s important to register your trade mark in this jurisdiction as soon as possible or you may miss out and in the process dilute your future ability to promote your brand globally.

Unlike Australia, China has a ‘first-to-file’ approach to trade mark registration.  This means the first applicant for a trade mark will generally acquire rights in the mark, even though they may not be the first user of the brand in that country.