Introduction China has completed the most consequential rewrite of its Trademark Law in over a decade. On June 26, 2026, the 23rd Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Fourteenth National People's Congress adopted a comprehensive revision of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China — the fifth amendment since the law was first enacted in 1982, and the first substantive overhaul since the narrow 2019 revision. The revised law, comprising 87 articles across nine chapters (up from 73 articles in eight chapters under the outgoing law), will enter into force on January 1, 2027. Trademarks registered before that date remain valid. For brand owners, in-house counsel, and IP practitioners with China exposure, this is not a routine update. The revision touches registration standards, opposition timelines, well-known mark protection, damages calculations, and — perhaps most significantly — the treatment of bad-faith and speculative filings that have long troubled foreig...
Keyword Advertising and Trademark Infringement: MakeMyTrip India Pvt. Ltd. v. Booking.com B.V. & Ors.
Background By order dated April 27, 2022, Justice Pratibha M. Singh of the Delhi High Court granted an interim injunction in favor of MakeMyTrip India Private Limited ("MMT") in its suit against Booking.com B.V. and others. MMT had sued to protect its registered trademarks "MakeMyTrip" and its variants, which Booking.com was using as keywords on Google's Ads Program to trigger its own advertisements in Google search results. MMT's grievance was that a search for "MakeMyTrip" frequently displayed, as the very first result in the advertisement category, a sponsored listing for Booking.com — one of MMT's principal competitors. MMT argued that such use of its registered mark by a direct competitor amounted to trademark infringement. Booking.com's Defense Booking.com resisted the injunction on several grounds: It relied on the European Commission's decision in Case AT.40428 — Guess , dated December 17, 2018 (the " Guess decision"...