Madrid Protocol Trademark — One Application, 130 Countries.

What the protocol actually does.

The Madrid Protocol does not create an international trademark. There is no such thing as a Madrid registration that “covers the world.” What the protocol does is create a centralized filing-and-management system on top of the underlying national trademark regimes.

The mechanic: an applicant files a single International Application with WIPO, designating one or more member countries (called “contracting parties”). WIPO records the application as an International Registration (an “IR”) and forwards it to each designated country’s trademark office. Each office examines the application under its own laws and either accepts or refuses extension of protection within 18 months (12 months for some countries).

The result is functionally a bundle of national trademark protections, each administered by the local office, but procedurally consolidated under a single IR number with a single renewal cycle. You pay one renewal fee every ten years to WIPO; you do not pay separate renewals to each country.

The Basic Application requirement.

Every Madrid International Application must be based on a national application or registration in the applicant’s home country. This is called the Basic Application or Basic Registration. For a U.S. applicant, the Basic Application is a USPTO application or registration. The International Application is filed through the USPTO, which forwards it to WIPO.

The classes and the ID-of-goods on the International Application cannot exceed the classes and ID on the Basic Application. If your USPTO Basic Application is in Classes 9 and 42 with specific ID language, your International Application can be Classes 9 and 42 with the same ID language or a subset, but it cannot expand. This constraint forces some forethought about the breadth of the Basic Application.

There is also a five-year dependency rule. For the first five years after the IR is recorded, if the Basic Application is cancelled, refused, or restricted, the IR is automatically cancelled or restricted to match. This is called central attack. After five years, the IR becomes independent of the Basic Application and any cancellation of the Basic does not affect the IR.

Cost comparison vs national filings.

The Madrid Protocol’s cost advantage comes from consolidation: one filing fee structure to WIPO instead of separate fees in each country. The fee breakdown:

• Basic fee — 653 Swiss francs (CHF) for a black-and-white mark, 903 CHF for a color mark. Paid once per International Application.
• Designation fees — vary by country. Some countries charge a standard 100 CHF per class; others (the U.S., EU, UK, Japan, others) charge “individual fees” that match their national filing fees.
• Supplementary fees — 100 CHF per additional class beyond the first.

In total, a typical software company filing in Classes 9 and 42 designating the U.S., EU, UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia pays roughly $4,000–$6,000 in total filing fees via Madrid, including the WIPO basic fee, individual fees for each country, and supplementary fees for the second class. Filing nationally in each country, by contrast, would cost roughly $8,000–$12,000 in filing fees plus the legal time to coordinate six separate applications.

The savings compound on renewal. The Madrid renewal at year 10 is one fee paid to WIPO, covering all designated countries. National renewals require separate filings and separate legal time in each country.

When to use Madrid (and when not).

Madrid is the right vehicle when (a) you have a stable Basic Application or Registration, (b) you want protection in three or more member countries, (c) the ID-of-goods on your Basic Application is broad enough to cover what you need internationally, and (d) you can tolerate the five-year central-attack risk.

Madrid is the wrong vehicle when (a) your Basic Application is vulnerable to cancellation in its first five years (e.g., descriptiveness refusal pending), (b) you want protection only in countries that are not Madrid members (Argentina, UAE, Saudi Arabia for example), (c) the local rules of a specific country require filing strategies Madrid doesn’t support, or (d) you need a very narrow ID of goods that requires customization per country.

In practice, most software companies should file via Madrid for their core markets and supplement with national filings only where Madrid doesn’t reach or where the country’s practice strongly favors direct national filing (China is sometimes cited in this category, though the Madrid designation works fine in most cases).

Searching the Madrid register for clearance.

WIPO maintains a free search interface called Madrid Monitor at wipo.int/madrid/monitor. This is the canonical search interface for international registrations and is the right place to clear an international filing before submitting it.

For founders doing clearance, Madrid Monitor is the second registry to sweep after USPTO TESS. International registrations designating the U.S. are imported into TESS, but the inverse is not true — a U.S. registration is not automatically visible to designated foreign offices unless the U.S. application has been processed through Madrid as the Basic. The implication: a thorough clearance search for an internet-facing brand checks both TESS and Madrid Monitor. The TESS walk-through is at USPTO Trademark Search Tutorial.

The Madrid Monitor query grammar is similar to TESS — word mark, owner, class, status filters. The corpus covers all international registrations recorded since 1996. The Etymolt platform currently indexes 108,000 IR records as a partial corpus, with the remaining ~700,000 reachable via the WIPO API on demand.

The member countries that matter.

All 130 contracting parties accept Madrid designations. For most software companies, six designations cover ~85% of revenue: U.S., EU (one designation covering 27 member states), UK, Canada, Australia, Japan. A second tier of useful designations: China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, India, Switzerland, Singapore, New Zealand.

Notable non-members in 2026 include several Middle Eastern markets (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, others). For those markets, national filings are required. Argentina is also a non-member; Argentina is the largest Spanish-speaking economy not covered by Madrid.

The EU designation is its own consideration. An EU designation provides protection in all 27 member states via a single examination by the EUIPO. If the EUIPO refuses protection, the entire EU designation is refused; the applicant can then request “conversion” into national filings in any individual EU member state, which is a procedurally involved option that adds time and legal cost. Designating individual EU states is sometimes preferable to the unified EU designation when there’s known opposition risk; the sibling page on §2(d) Likelihood of Confusion covers the analogous U.S. framework that informs the EU posture.

Timeline, publication, and refusals.

Once an International Application is filed, WIPO has roughly two months to record it as an IR. The IR is then transmitted to each designated country’s trademark office, which has 12 or 18 months (depending on the country’s declaration under the protocol) to examine and either accept or refuse extension of protection. The refusal window is hard: if a country does not issue a refusal within the window, protection is automatically extended.

Refusals in any single country do not affect the IR in other designated countries. A U.S. refusal does not affect the EU designation; an EU refusal does not affect the Japan designation. Each country’s examination is independent within the umbrella of the IR. This is one of the protocol’s primary advantages over national filing: a refusal in one market is contained.

When a country issues a refusal, the applicant has the usual local response window (typically 3–6 months) to argue against the refusal under local law. The argument typically proceeds in the local language through a local attorney. The Madrid Protocol does not provide a unified appellate path; each country’s refusal is contested locally.

How Etymolt verifies trademarks.

Etymolt’s trademark axis runs USPTO TESS, EUIPO, UKIPO, and the 108K-IR Madrid Monitor partial corpus in parallel for every candidate. The platform reports international registrations alongside the U.S. record set, with the Nice classes and designated countries surfaced for each hit. Founders considering an international filing strategy can see the global footprint of the senior mark in a single verdict. Every flag traces to a WIPO IR number or a national serial. The verdict is attested and permalinked. Full methodology at /methodology. If you’re new to clearance, start with How to Check If a Brand Name Is Trademarked.