The Supreme People’s Court promulgated the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Administrative Cases Involving the Granting and Confirmation of Trademark Rights, effective March 1, 2017.
The 31 articles address the scope of examination, assessment of distinctiveness, protection of well-known trademarks, prior copyright and name rights, procedural violations and the prohibition on repeated proceedings concerning the same matter, among other issues in trademark cases.
Article 20 addresses protection of name rights:
Where a party claims that a disputed trademark infringes their name rights, the court may uphold the claim if the relevant public identifies the mark with that individual and is likely to believe that the goods bearing it are authorized by or otherwise associated with that individual.
Where a party seeks protection for a pen name, stage name, transliterated name or other specific name, the court shall uphold the claim if the name has a certain reputation and a stable association with the individual, such that the relevant public uses it to refer to that individual.
The provisions also clarify bad-faith preemptive applications. Under Article 15, paragraph 3 of the provisions, where an applicant has a family or other specific personal relationship with an agent or representative, and the application can therefore be presumed to result from bad-faith collusion with that agent or representative, the court shall apply Article 15, paragraph 1 of the Trademark Law.
Source: http://www.ocn.com.cn/chanjing/201701/wjerb11165444.shtml