If you are an Indian company, society, trust, firm, sole proprietor or any other entrepreneur, you can take advantage of the Madrid Protocol to protect your brand in many countries around the world, following a simple and cost-effective procedure for filing your trade mark applications and managing your trade mark registrations abroad.
The Madrid Protocol is a treaty, signed by India in 2013, that provides for international registration of trademarks by filling a single application with one set of fee. The regulatory body of Madrid Protocol is the International Bureau of World Intellectual Property Organization (IB of WIPO). An application for registration of a trademark under the Madrid Protocol can be filled though the Indian Trademark Office of the respective jurisdiction. The application under Madrid Protocol can be filed under 3 languages, i.e., English, French and Spanish.
Based on your Indian trade mark, you can file an international application, online, at the IP India website (http://www.ipindia.gov.in/trade-marks.htm), designating all or some of the members of the Madrid Union where you wish your mark to be protected.
The application is transmitted to WIPO for examination, registration and publication. Thereafter the particulars of the international registration are notified by WIPO to each of the designated Members of the Madrid Union.
The Madrid Union members have to decide within very strict time limits whether they can grant protection to your mark in their territories. In case, any designated member does not communicate any objection within a period of 18 months from the date of notification of the international registration to it, the mark under international registration, is deemed protected within the territory of that member, as if the same has been registered directly with the IP office of that member.
If no objection is found by any of the designated contracting parties, WIPO registers the mark in the International Registry and then publishes the International registration in a Gazette.
An application for registration of a trademark under Madrid Protocol can be filled through FORM MM2 for a prescribed fee with the respective Trade Marks Office of the applicant’s jurisdiction.
Refer: (1) Forms – http://www.wipo.int/madrid/en/forms/,
(2) Fee – http://www.wipo.int/madrid/en/how_to/file/fees.html
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