Businesses often overlook registering their mark in the country in which their goods are manufactured in favour of registering in the countries in which the goods are sold.

Potentially this could cause all manner of problems. Say for example company x (UK) sells sports equipment, it has an agreement in place with a Chinese company to manufacture the goods to its specifications and then to export them to company x in the UK. This is all well and good, company x may even have been sensible and registered their trade mark in the UK to prevent others from selling similar goods in the UK. However the danger is that if they have not obtained registration in China then a competitor could file an application in China, once registered they could then use this mark to prevent the manufacturer from exporting the goods.

If the manufacturer had been in Europe for example this would not be a problem as European trade mark law is a "first to use" system so the fact that company x had used the mark in the territory would mean that they could potentially apply to revoke their competitors mark. But China and other systems are "first to register" systems and so it is important to protect your mark by registering it there if you manufacture your goods there.