Eisen and Painter are involved in a lawsuit alleging that Trump's foreign business ties violate the U.S. Constitution. Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as "totally without merit."
Alan Garten, chief legal officer of The Trump Organization, said the Chinese trademarks were already in the works before the election, and the president has turned management of his company over to his children and a team of executives.
In an email, Garten wrote, "The only mark we were seeking was one in the related class of construction which someone was improperly squatting on."
The precise value of the trademarks is a matter of debate, but Trump himself thought his brands in China were worth enough to defend them, according to a 2011 letter he wrote then-Commerce Secretary Gary Locke about a trademark dispute in Macau, an autonomous region of China.
"I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to secure my own name and globally recognized brand from Chinese individuals who seek to trade off my reputation," Trump wrote.
In May 2009, he dispatched a team with 300 pounds of evidence to prove that Donald Trump was, in fact, famous. It didn't work. Trump railed against the courts as "faithless, corrupt and tainted."
"The Trump name resonates throughout the entire world," Trump wrote. "According to their ignorant council of judges, it appears the only two places in the world I am not well known are China and Macao," he added, using an alternative spelling.
That may be changing.
As president, Trump's elevated profile in China will likely make it easier to protect his brand, said Zhou Dandan, a lawyer with Unitalen Attorneys at Law in Beijing, which has worked for Trump since 2006. Trademark authorities will almost certainly reject new "Trump" applications from unrelated parties, she said, and may take back rights from existing "Trump" trademark holders.
That's what happened in the case nearing completion this week.
Trump applied for rights to the Trump mark for construction services on Dec. 7, 2006, but a man named Dong Wei had filed a similar application about two weeks earlier. China works on a first-come-first-served basis for trademarks, and the Trademark Office rejected Trump's application.
Trump appealed to the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board, then to the Beijing Intermediate People's Court, and finally to the Beijing High People's Court. He lost, lost and lost again.
Separately, he tried to invalidate Dong's trademark, but failed, and failed again on appeal, according to Matthew Dresden, a China intellectual property attorney at Harris Bricken in Seattle, who has studied the case.
The last time courts ruled against Trump in the construction-services case was May 2015, the month before he declared his candidacy.
Then Trump's lawyers simply went back to the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board, which had already rejected their case, and again asked them to invalidate Dong's trademark, Dresden said.
This time it worked. On Sept. 6, 2016, the Trademark Office published its invalidation of Dong's trademark for construction services. Dong could not be reached for comment.