Dec 20, 2025 | Abandoned Mark

1. In 1998, the author handled a lawsuit concerning the “deprecated trademark (i.e. Abandoned mark)”. After the trial, the High Court ultimately issued an order to cancel the “registered (deprecated) mark” (i.e., Registered (abandoned) mark) in the case. This year (i.e. 2025), the author once again encountered the “registered (abandoned) trademark” dispute while handling legal cases.

2. Although the above topic of “abandoned trademarks” is not common, the “gold content” is quite high, and it is believed that there will be quite a few businessmen interested in considering applying for registration of abandoned trademarks.

3. The core value of an “abandoned trademark” lies in its potential market awareness. If a certain trademark has been used for decades, even over a hundred years, it has significant commercial value. As long as it falls into the eyes of a rich business-minded businessman, and then the “abandoned trademark” is registered and packaged for use, the “abandoned trademark” can be revived in the market, the potential is unlimited.

4. The premise of “abandoned trademark” is, of course, that the original owner has abandoned the use of the trademark for many years. “Abandoned trademarks” usually occur in the following three situations:

(a) The owner never applied for registration of the trademark and its successors gave up the use of the trademark.
(b) Registering a trademark is time-limited (e.g. 10-year validity). If the registrant does not apply for renewal before the time limit, the registered trademark will be terminated (i.e., ineffective).
(c) A trademark is an international trademark. In Hong Kong, the owner has not registered it as a registered trademark.

5. In any of the above cases, interested businessmen may consider applying for the “abandoned trademark” as a registered trademark. If the trademark application is approved by the Hong Kong Trademark Registry and no one objects within the three-month announcement period, the “abandoned trademark” can be successfully applied for as a registered trademark. The businessman/registrant becomes the registrant of the veteran trademark.

6. With the use of the registered veteran trademark, the registrant can establish its reputation in the veteran trademark and further consolidate its perception of owning the veteran trademark in the market.

7. The author encountered the above situations mostly occur in traditional industries, such as Chinese medicinal oil and Food and Beverage industries.

8. Nonetheless, registrants also need to be aware of the following potential shady capsizing crises:

(a) On seeing the success of the registrar, the descendants of the original trademark owner jump to challenge that the trademark was not abandoned; and
(b) Competitors engaged in the industry was unable to bear and stood up to challenge registered (deprecated) trademarks.

9. If the challenge does arise, then the original trademark owner or industry competitor will need to produce evidence that the abandoned trademark has not been deprecated.

10. It is because of the above potential challenges that the author recommends that businessmen must first successfully register the “abandoned trademark”.