China's official trademark and patent fee schedule—every item with its document number, effective date, and a link to the government page the figure comes from.
| Item | Paper | Online |
|---|---|---|
| Registration application (per mark per class, up to 10 items) | CNY 300 | CNY 270 |
| Each additional item beyond 10 in the same class | CNY 30 | CNY 27 |
| Renewal (per class) | CNY 500 | CNY 450 |
| Renewal in the grace period—surcharge | CNY 250 | CNY 225 |
| Assignment / transfer (per class) | CNY 500 | CNY 450 |
| Recordal of changesfree online | CNY 150 | CNY 0 |
| Opposition (per class) | CNY 500 | CNY 450 |
| Cancellation (per class) | CNY 500 | CNY 450 |
| Trademark review case (per class) | CNY 750 | CNY 675 |
| Reissue of registration certificate | CNY 500 | CNY 450 |
| Certified extract of trademark records | CNY 50 | CNY 45 |
| Recordal of trademark license contract | CNY 150 | CNY 135 |
| Collective mark | CNY 1,500 | CNY 1,350 |
| Certification mark | CNY 1,500 | CNY 1,350 |
Rule: file online and accept electronic service of documents, and the fee is 90% of the standard rate.
Basis: notices 计价格〔1995〕2404号, 发改价格〔2015〕2136号, 财税〔2017〕20号 and 发改价格〔2019〕914号—in force since 2019-07-01.
Source:CNIPA Trademark Office — Schedule of Fees · 2019 fee adjustment notice. Last checked: 2026-09-18.
These figures are read directly from the original PDFs of the official documents listed at the end of this guide, not from secondhand summaries—which matters, because the summaries don't agree with each other.
| Item | Fees |
|---|---|
| Invention patent—filing fee | CNY 900 |
| Utility model—filing fee | CNY 500 |
| Design patent—filing fee | CNY 500 |
| Invention patent—substantive examination fee | CNY 2,500 |
| Publication printing fee (invention, at publication) | CNY 50 |
| Priority claim fee (per priority claim) | CNY 80 |
| Each claim from the 11th onward | CNY 150 |
| Each page of the description from page 31 | CNY 50 |
| Each page of the description from page 301 | CNY 100 |
Source: NDRC — Schedule of Patent Fees (Domestic) (PDF). Last checked: 2026-09-18.
Payable every year for the life of the patent. The true cost of a Chinese patent portfolio hides in this column—and it is exactly the column most fee comparisons leave out.
| Years | Annuities |
|---|---|
| Years 1–3 | CNY 900per year |
| Years 4–6 | CNY 1,200per year |
| Years 7–9 | CNY 2,000per year |
| Years 10–12 | CNY 4,000per year |
| Years 13–15 | CNY 6,000per year |
| Years 16–20 | CNY 8,000per year |
| Years | Annuities |
|---|---|
| Years 1–3 | CNY 600per year |
| Years 4–5 | CNY 900per year |
| Years 6–8 | CNY 1,200per year |
| Years 9–10 | CNY 2,000per year |
| Years 11–15design patents only | CNY 3,000per year |
The two terms differ: a utility model runs 10 years, so its annuities end at years 9–10; a design patent has run 15 years since 2021-06-01 (Article 42 of the Patent Law as amended in 2020), which adds a years 11–15 tier at CNY 3,000 per year—any fee table that costs design ownership over 10 years is stuck before 2021. Basis: NDRC notice 发改价格〔2022〕465号.
Pay late and a surcharge of 5% of the full annuity for that year is added for each month of delay. Leave it long enough and the patent lapses; the fee to request restoration of rights is CNY 1,000, and paying it does not guarantee restoration.
One rarer case: where the patent term is compensated for examination delay or for the regulatory review of a new drug, two fees introduced in 2024 apply—a term compensation request fee of CNY 200 per case and an annuity of CNY 8,000 per year for the compensated term (Announcement No. 594). Most applicants never meet them, but a fee table should be complete.
Above is the smooth path. Below is what happens when it isn't—a refusal to be reviewed, a challenge to be defended in invalidation, a missed deadline to be restored. Most fee tables leave these out.
| Item | Invention | Utility model | Design patents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reexamination feeafter refusal | CNY 1,000 | CNY 300 | CNY 300 |
| Invalidation request fee | CNY 3,000 | CNY 1,500 | CNY 1,500 |
| Patent evaluation report request fee | Not applicable | CNY 2,400 | CNY 2,400 |
| Item | Fees |
|---|---|
| Time limit extension request feefirst request | CNY 300per month |
| Further time limit extension request fee | CNY 2,000per month |
| Restoration of rights request fee | CNY 1,000 |
| Bibliographic data change feeinventor, applicant, patentee | CNY 200 |
| Certified copy of patent documents | CNY 30per copy |
Patent evaluation report: utility models and design patents are not substantively examined, so when you enforce one, the other side's first question is whether the right will hold. Under Article 66 of the Patent Law, the people's court or the patent administration department may ask the patentee to produce an evaluation report made by CNIPA as evidence in an infringement dispute. That CNY 2,400 is not spent on filing day, but it often is on enforcement day—a budget that only compares filing fees never sees it.
Missed payments and restoration: an annuity not paid by its due date can still be paid within 6 months of the notice (with a surcharge of 5% of that year's annuity for each month over); if it still goes unpaid, the patent right terminates retroactively from the date the annuity fell due, not 6 months later (Article 115 of the Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law). Restoration of rights has hard windows too: for force majeure, within 2 months of the obstacle being removed and within 2 years of the deadline; for other legitimate reasons, within 2 months of receiving the notice (Article 6)—miss the window and no fee will help.
Entering China via the PCT or the Hague System adds a layer of international-procedure fees on top of the domestic ones. They come in two kinds: what CNIPA charges for itself is a fixed price in CNY; what it collects on behalf of WIPO's International Bureau floats with the Swiss franc exchange rate.
| Charged by CNIPAfixed price in CNY | Fees |
|---|---|
| International search fee / additional search fee | CNY 2,100each |
| International preliminary examination fee / additional fee | CNY 1,500each |
| Priority document fee | CNY 150 |
| Protest fee (unity of invention) / late furnishing fee | CNY 200each |
| Copy fee | CNY 2per page |
| Restoration of rights request fee | CNY 1,000 |
| Grace period feenational phase entry | CNY 1,000 |
| Translation correction feepreliminary / substantive examination | CNY 300 · CNY 1,200 |
| Restoration of unity fee / restoration of priority fee | CNY 900 · CNY 1,000 |
| Hague: individual designation fee for Chinafirst / second / third part | CNY 4,100 · CNY 7,600 · CNY 15,000 |
| Collected for the International Bureaufloats with the exchange rate, from 2026-01-01 | Fees |
|---|---|
| International filing feeup to 30 pages | CNY 11,910 |
| Each page over 30 | CNY 130 |
| Electronic filing reductionPDF / XML | minus CNY 1,790 · minus CNY 2,690 |
| Handling feeinternational preliminary examination | CNY 1,790 |
| International search fee collected for the European Patent OfficeChina–EPO pilot | CNY 15,390 |
Filing through CNIPA as receiving Office waives two fees: first, where CNIPA received the application and carried out the international search, the filing fee and the additional filing fee are waived on national phase entry; second, where CNIPA drew up the international search report or the international preliminary report on patentability, the substantive examination fee (CNY 2,500) is waived when examination is requested. Annuities, agency fees and the international filing fee collected in the international phase are all still payable.
The fees collected on WIPO's behalf are set in Swiss francs, converted at the exchange rate and republished periodically: under the previous schedule (from 2025-07-01) the international filing fee was still CNY 11,620; six months later it is CNY 11,910. So any fee page that hard-codes these numbers without a date is waiting to go stale—this page included; check CNIPA's latest announcement before paying.
Source: Schedule of Patent Fees and Integrated Circuit Layout-Design Fees (《专利收费、集成电路布图设计收费标准》, CNIPA, 2024-08-06); announcement of the 2026 PCT fee amounts in CNY (2025-12-24); the current texts of the Patent Law and the Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law. Last checked: 2026-09-20.
China's patent fee reductions: a single eligible applicant pays 85% less; two or more eligible co-applicants pay 70% less. The current thresholds are annual income below CNY 60,000 for an individual, or taxable income below CNY 1,000,000 for an enterprise, in force since 2019-07-01 under 财税〔2019〕45号. The fees that can be reduced (item by item, as the official wording has it): the filing fee (excluding the publication printing fee and the additional filing fee), the substantive examination fee for invention applications, the reexamination fee, annuities, and the first and second parts of the individual designation fee for China under the Hague System—with the annuity reduction period extended from 6 years to 10 years from the year of grant (plus any period in which an open license is being implemented) (Announcement No. 272, 2018; the State Taxation Administration's 2024 guidance says the same).
Before trusting any English article on this topic, one thing is worth knowing. CNIPA's own fee reduction page still shows the superseded 2016 thresholds—average monthly income below CNY 3,500, enterprise taxable income below CNY 300,000—numbers that were replaced in 2019. The official website and the official standard contradict each other. Anyone who takes their figures from that page, however carefully, gets them wrong. We use the State Taxation Administration's page, which carries the current figures.
On 2026-09-20 we read the full text of the Measures on the Reduction of Patent Fees (《专利收费减缴办法》, 财税〔2016〕78号)—not one provision excludes foreign applicants by nationality or residence. But Article 7 allows only three kinds of supporting evidence: an enterprise files a copy of its Chinese annual enterprise income tax return; an individual files an annual income certificate issued by their employer, or a certificate of financial hardship issued by the county-level civil affairs department where they are registered or habitually reside; a public institution or social organization files its legal-person certificate. All three assume the applicant sits inside China's tax or household registration system. So the accurate statement is: the rules do not exclude you, but you most likely cannot produce the evidence they ask for—a documentation hurdle, not an eligibility bar. An applicant that is itself a taxpayer in mainland China (a Chinese subsidiary, for example) is assessed under the ordinary enterprise thresholds.
CNY 270 per class for online filing (about USD 40 at the rate of 1 USD = 6.75 CNY checked on 2026-08-10), covering up to 10 goods or services items in that class; each item beyond 10 costs a further CNY 27. On paper the figures are CNY 300 and CNY 30. This schedule has applied since 2019-07-01 under notices 计价格〔1995〕2404号, 发改价格〔2015〕2136号, 财税〔2017〕20号 and 发改价格〔2019〕914号, as published by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). The official fee is legally denominated in CNY; the dollar figure is only a dated reference conversion. These are official fees only—the agency's service fee is separate and quoted case by case.
No. The official fee is CNY 270 for online filing, priced in CNY—about USD 40 at the 2026-08-10 rate of 6.75, not USD 50. That $50 appears on several English-language China trademark sites, at least one of which has shown it since 2016. It is an old price converted at an old exchange rate. The problem is not the arithmetic—it is that a fee table nobody has updated in ten years tells you how the rest of that firm's services are looked after. If someone gives you a dollar figure for a Chinese official fee, ask which day's rate they used and what it was; if they can answer neither, the number is decoration.
If you file online and accept electronic service of documents, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) charges 90% of the standard fee. Both conditions must be met.
We don't know, and we won't pretend to. The Measures do not expressly exclude foreign applicants. But the evidence they require—a Chinese enterprise income tax return, or an income certificate from the applicant's Chinese employer—assumes the applicant is inside China's tax system. We have found no official statement that settles the point. Sources that confidently tell you foreign applicants qualify have, in our judgment, confused paying official fees with qualifying for reduced official fees.
No. The patent registration fee, the publication printing fee at the grant stage, the bibliographic data change fee for changing patent agency, and the PCT transmittal fee were all abolished from 2018-08-01 by CNIPA Announcement No. 272. Any price list that still shows them is out of date.
