The State Administration for Market Regulation ("SAMR") has recently enacted and released the Guide to the Naming of Dietary Supplements (2019 Edition) (the "Guide").
The Guide is divided into four parts that deal with the constitution of a dietary supplement's name, basic principles for naming dietary supplements, content prohibited in the names of dietary supplements, and requirements for declaration and evaluation of proposed names for dietary supplements, respectively. The Guide stipulates that the name of a dietary supplement consists of the trademark name, the generic name, and the name indicating its attributes in sequence; naming a dietary supplement should follow the principle of "one name for one dietary supplement" and other basic principles; the name of a dietary supplement shall not contain the name of a person, the name of a place, pinyin, or letters/numbers, except the letters/numbers contained in the names of registered trademarks and the generic names that are otherwise stipulated by the Guide. Also, the Guide sets out the requirements for declaration and evaluation of the trademark names, generic names and names indicating the attributes, contained in the names of dietary supplements. It is provided, for example, that the generic names should be the names of raw materials used to produce the products, and that the names of raw materials should comply with the requirements laid down in relevant national standards, or the requirements laid down in relevant local standards or industry standards, if there are no such national standards.