On April 23, the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress issued the Decision of Revision of Eight Laws, which includes the fourth revision of the PRC Trademark Law (the “TML”). The revision attracted wide attention from the international IP communities as it addressed the bad-faith trademark registration issue, one of the most significant challenges to trademark protection of international brands in China. In addition, On April 24, the Beijing High Court issued comprehensive and broad guidelines for Authorization and Confirmation of Trademark (the “Guidelines”). The following is a discussion and analysis related to bad faith application on the Guidelines. I. Regulation against Bad Faith Application and Registration New Articles of TML Provision for rejecting bad faith application and registration without intent-to-use (NITU) Article 4 Natural persons, legal persons or any other organizations that need to obtain exclusive rights to use trademark for their commodities or services in the course of their manufacturing and business activities shall apply to a trademark bureau for trademark registration. Any application for trademark registration that is malicious and is not filed for the purpose of use shall be rejected [1]. Bad faith application without intent to use shall be regarded as a legal ground for opposition and invalidation Article 33 A prior right holder or a stakeholder who holds that a preliminarily validated and gazetted trademark violates the provisions of the second and third paragraphs of Article 13, Article 15, the first paragraph of Article 16, Article 30, 31 or Article 32 of this Law, or any person who held that a preliminarily validated and gazetted trademark violates the provisions of Article 4, 10,...