Many countries have “common law” protection for unregistered trademarks – i.e. if you have been making “Rastaman Vibration” sneakers for ten years, the law will protect that name even though you never registered it. In China, however, you can only legally protect your company’s name, logo or wordmark if you have registered it. Chinese law gives certain protection to “well known” trademarks that have not been registered, which can help firms with well-established trademarks. But even then, the legal protection might not be the same as in other countries. Registering a trademark is fairly simple: you fill out some forms, give the Trademark Office a thousand kuai, and then you wait about a year while they approve (or don’t approve) your trade-mark. Although registering may take a long time, China operates on a first-to-file system, which means that once you have applied, other companies cannot file get the trademark after you. The bad news is that the full list of trademarks is only accurate after three months, so if someone has registered the same name two months and twenty-nine days ago, you would have no way of knowing. Companies and individuals without official Chinese documents (a joint venture business license counts, a visa doesn’t) must go through an agent to register. This is likely to cost between RMB 1,500-1,800.