For many products, the place is the brand: Scotch whisky, Parma ham, Shaoxing rice wine. Where a product’s quality and reputation come from its origin, the name of that origin is the asset worth defending. As China’s geographical indication (GI) regime matures, international right holders increasingly need to know how such a name is protected in China – and how to secure it. For foreign owners, the principal route is to register the GI as a collective or certification trademark. This article walks through the essential steps and what brand owners should know in practice.

What is a geographical indication?

The basic concept is simple, and familiar to any shopper who chooses Roquefort over an ordinary blue cheese, or Darjeeling over an ordinary black tea. A geographical indication is a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin.

Article 22.1 of the TRIPS Agreement defines geographical indications as:

… indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member [of the World Trade Organization], or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.

According to article 16(2) of the China Trademark Law:

A geographical indication refers to a sign indicating that a particular good originates in a certain region and that a specific quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially determined by the natural factors or human factors of that region.

Whatever the wording, every definition turns on the same idea: a genuine link between the product and its place of origin. A GI usually takes the form of a place name – sometimes alone, more often combined with the name of the product. Familiar examples, with their origins, include Cognac, from western France; Tequila, from designated regions of Mexico; and Café de Colombia, from the Colombian coffee belt. China has a deep stock of its own – Longjing (Dragon Well) tea from around Hangzhou, Pixian bean paste from Sichuan and Wuchang rice from Heilongjiang.

What is the difference between a GI and an ordinary trademark?

That genuine link also marks the key difference between a GI and an ordinary trademark. An ordinary trademark distinguishes the goods of a single undertaking and signals who is responsible for them; a GI denotes a regional origin and a standard, and may be used by any producer in the area who meets it.

They also differ in how they arise and how they move. An ordinary trademark is often a fanciful or arbitrary sign, and can be assigned or licensed to anyone, anywhere, because it belongs to a particular owner – a company, an individual or another organisation – rather than to a place. A GI is largely predetermined by the geographical name and is tied to its origin: it may be used only by producers in the area who meet the standard and cannot be transferred to anyone outside it.

China’s route: collective trademarks and certification trademarks

As noted above, the China Trademark Law treats a GI as a sign whose quality or reputation is essentially determined by the natural or human factors of its region. Article 4 of the Implementing Regulations of the China Trademark Law supplies the mechanism: a GI may be registered as a certification trademark or a collective trademark, filed with and examined by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).

The two vehicles are defined in article 3 of the China Trademark Law. A collective trademark is registered in the name of a group, association or other organisation and is used by its members in commercial activities to indicate their membership. A certification trademark is controlled by an organisation that has the capacity to supervise a particular good or service and is used by parties other than that organisation to certify the good’s origin, raw materials, method of manufacture, quality or other specific characteristics.

What sets a GI trademark apart is that it is a shared, standards-based right, not the exclusive right of a single proprietor. The article 4 of the Implementing Regulations of the China Trademark Law opens the right to every qualifying producer: anyone whose goods meet the GI’s conditions may use a GI certification trademark – and the controlling organisation must allow it – or may join the body that holds a GI collective trademark, which must admit it under its articles of association; a qualifying producer may even use the GI without joining, and the right holder cannot prohibit this. Goods produced outside the defined area, by contrast, may not use the GI at all.

Registering a foreign GI in China

Who may apply

Who may apply differs by trademark type and follows from each trademark’s function. A collective trademark shows that the producers using it belong to a particular organisation, so the applicant must itself be a collective body – an association or comparable organisation (eg, the China Xinhua Bookstore Association or the Panggezhuang Watermelon Association in Beijing) – not a natural person or individual trader.

A certification trademark certifies the origin, materials, method, quality or other characteristics of goods, so the applicant must be a legally established body that does not itself produce or trade in the goods (eg, the China Green Food Development Center or Underwriters Laboratories (UL) in the United States) but is able to supervise those characteristics. In a GI context, then, the applicant is the body that sets and polices the standard – typically an industry association – not a seller of the goods.

The information and documents required

A GI application must describe in its documents: the specific quality, reputation or other characteristics of the goods carrying the GI; that those characteristics are essentially determined by the natural or human factors of the area the GI indicates; and the scope of that area.

A foreign applicant must then submit:

• proof that the GI is protected by law, in its name, in its country of origin – a single home-country protection certificate that stands in for the domestic government approval, the area delimitation, the quality-origin link and the reputation evidence;

• proof that the applicant (or a body it commissions) is able to supervise and test the product; and

• use-and-management rules governing how the trademark is applied and policed.

The home-country GI registration is therefore the anchor of the whole application and should be put in order first.

The distinctiveness issue: a deliberate exception

Distinctiveness often surprises applicants. A GI trademark is typically a place name plus the product’s generic name – “Wuchang rice”, say – which an examiner would ordinarily reject as descriptive. For genuine GI trademarks, the Guidelines for Trademark Examination and Review make a deliberate exception: because a GI trademark signifies a close link between the product’s quality and its origin, it is not treated as lacking distinctive character. The exception has limits: assessed together with article 16(2), a “place plus product” sign that is not truly a GI – its term merely generic, or its quality not genuinely tied to the region – will still be refused.

Direct filing with the CNIPA, or the Madrid System?

A right holder may either file directly with the CNIPA or designate China through the Madrid System (an international trademark registration system run by the World Intellectual Property Organization). Each route has trade-offs:

• Direct filing with the CNIPA is the better fit for GI trademarks: it accommodates the heavy package of supporting documents and lets the applicant engage with the examiner on GI-specific requirements. The trade-offs are the need for a local agent and single-country cost.

• Madrid System designation is efficient for protecting an ordinary mark in many countries using one application, but a poor fit for a GI collective or certification trademark. The supporting materials must still be filed through a Chinese trademark agency within three months of the international registration – in practice, the office routinely calls for them – or the designation is refused.

For a pure GI collective or certification trademark, direct filing is the safer course. Once registered, the trademark runs for 10 years and is renewable indefinitely – subject to cancellation for three consecutive years’ non-use and, as the next section explains, to the risk that the term becomes generic.

Two pitfalls to plan around: genericness and the Chinese name

Genericness is one of the greatest threats to a GI trademark, and well-known names can be especially exposed. “Champagne” has come a long way to achieve protected status in China; it was once considered as a generic term for sparkling wine. Crucially, genericness is assessed market by market, and the same name can meet opposite fates: “champagne” is rigorously protected in the EU and China yet is a “semi-generic” wine term in the United States (usable as “California champagne”), while “feta” is a protected designation of origin in the EU – and, under the mutual-recognition agreement discussed below, protected in China too – yet is treated as a generic cheese type in many other markets. A name that is safe at home therefore cannot be assumed safe in China – one more reason to register early.

Equally important, and frequently overlooked, is the Chinese-language name, which deserves protection in its own right, for several reasons:

• Many Chinese consumers have limited proficiency in English, so relying solely on a Latin-script mark may significantly reduce the potential customer base.

• If a brand owner does not provide an official Chinese equivalent, Chinese consumers tend to coin their own – and these unofficial “nicknames” can carry unintended negative or comic connotations.

• In Chinese trademark practice, a Chinese transliteration is generally regarded as not similar to its Latin-script counterpart. Consequently, if a third party registers the transliteration first, an earlier Latin-script mark will not necessarily allow the owner to stop it.

Securing the Chinese designation – a considered transliteration and, where appropriate, a translation – should therefore form part of the core filing strategy, not an afterthought.

EU–China mutual recognition of geographical indications

For European right holders, a treaty route runs in parallel to trademark registration. After eight years of talks, the EU and China signed the Agreement between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the European Union on Cooperation on, and Protection of, Geographical Indications on 14 September 2020; it entered into force on 1 March 2021. It is the first comprehensive, high-level GI agreement China has concluded.

The Agreement sets out the rules of protection and the lists of mutually recognised GIs, which together cover more than 500 products. The EU side is all food and drink – Cognac, Bordeaux, Feta, Prosciutto di Parma and Irish whiskey among them – while the Chinese side ranges from Yantai apples and Anyue lemons to traditional crafts such as Xuan paper and Shu brocade. Protection has been phased in over two batches: in the first, 100 Chinese and 96 EU GIs were protected from the date of entry into force; over the course of the following four years, a second batch of 175 names on each side was processed.

Under the Agreement, a listed GI is protected automatically, without case-by-case trademark registration and without arguments over genericness; that protection flows mainly from the treaty list, not from trademark law, so the two remain distinct. The Agreement extends it to translations and transliterations and reaches imitations hedged with words such as “kind”, “type”, “style” or “imitation”. Listed EU products may carry China’s official GI logo, while listed Chinese products may carry the EU’s official GI logo. A later trademark conflicting with a listed GI will be refused or invalidated, while earlier good-faith trademarks may continue.

Being on the list, however, does not guarantee that no one else has already claimed the name in China – a bad-faith squatter may have registered it as a trademark first. Prudent right holders therefore run a clearance search and, where appropriate, register the collective or certification trademark anyway. The Agreement is a fast lane that complements, rather than replaces, trademark protection.

Strong protection for foreign GIs

A recent decision shows how far that protection can reach, even without a Chinese trademark registration: among the “Typical Cases of Trademark Opposition and Review of 2024” that the CNIPA published in September 2025 is an opposition in which a prior GI prevailed. In the opposition action against the mark “L’OIE DES LANDES” under No. 70283061 (Class 29), France’s National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO) challenged a Shanghai company’s application to register “L’OIE DES LANDES” for meat, fish (not live) and similar goods, arguing that it violated article 10(1)(7) (signs liable to mislead the public) and article 16(1) (GIs) of the China Trademark Law.

Upon examination, the CNIPA confirmed that “VOLAILLES DES LANDES” (“Landes poultry” in English) is a French GI; that Landes is world-famous for duck and goose foie gras; and that the Landes goose, a renowned premium breed, was already known to the relevant Chinese public. The opposed mark means “Landes goose” and is close in meaning to that GI. As the applicant’s goods did not originate in the region, the mark would be liable to mislead the public as to the variety and origin of the goods. It was rejected for registration under article 10(1)(7) and article 16(1).

The case is a model application of article 16(1) extending equal protection to foreignGIs and reflects the trademark authority’s firm resolve to foster a sound business environment, to combat bad-faith free-riding on the reputation of foreign GIs and the misleading of consumers, and to uphold an honest and well-ordered system of trademark registration.

Key takeaways

• Act early. Secure rights before the designation drifts towards generic use and register the Chinese-language name alongside the original.

• File directly with the CNIPA for GI trademarks. Assemble the home-country protection certificate, the supervision-and-testing evidence and the use-and-management rules in advance.

• Select an eligible applicant. It must be an organisation with genuine supervisory capacity; an ordinary operating company will not qualify, and a certification-trademark holder may not trade in the certified goods.

• Use the EU–China Agreement where it is available – but treat it as complementary to trademark registration – and clear the Chinese register for conflicting marks.

• Protect the Chinese name. Choose and register an official transliteration (and, where useful, a translation) rather than leaving it to the market.

• Monitor, enforce and check your own house. Watch for squatting, use the available enforcement tools and confirm your own product names do not encroach on GIs already protected in China.

China’s GI regime is growing stronger and more closely aligned with Europe’s. For international brands the priorities are simple: protect early, protect the Chinese-language name, register as a collective or certification trademark, and keep the evidence to defend the right.