Introducing: WIPO’s Madrid Member Profile Database

Want to register a trademark but are baffled by the myriad of different systems in each country/region? Fear not because the smart people of WIPO come to the rescue. Seriously though, on WIPO’s webpages they provide you with all the information you need depending on the member state you plan to register your mark in. We show the newest developments:

Madrid Member Profile Database: Some kind of “All-in-One” Solution

Have a look at http://www.wipo.int/madrid/memberprofiles

They almost thought of everything, providing you with a “quick-start guide” as well. With 91 states having joined the PMMA and more to come it may become quite the hassle to sift through every member state’s trademark office’s webpage – provided there is one – to find the information you need in a language you understand.

WIPO’s new information page shows you information about each member state’s trademark office in English or in French. Our guess is that other languages will be available, soon. Very handy is the fact that you may choose to receive the same information for a number of trademark office’s which saves you the trouble of looking for the same information for each office independently. After you check which information you need for each office and hit the search button you are able to view the data all on the same page and may save the search results as a pdf-file.

Example: This is how it works

In the following example we wanted to know about the types of trademarks that can be protected in Japan or in North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and the language in which the office issues notifications. This is how it works (Picture -> click to enlarge):

(1) So we chose and checked the country of interest within the left box labeled “Step 1”.

(2) Then we showed more information about the designated countries. The information on the far right when the information box is expanded belongs to the highlighted subcategory.

(3) The first subcategory labeled “When Designating” is already highlighted. Other information will be shown on the far right if you click on the blue titles on the left or on each adjacent arrow. For our search only the subcategory “When Designating” is relevant.

(4) For the types of trademarks available for protection we check the first box and for the office’s notification language we check the last box on the right.

(5) Finally we hit the search button at the top of the page and receive the following summarization which we may choose to save as a pdf-file.

The WIPO lists the date of the last update on the offices at the top right corner for every country’s information. We advise to check whether there have been any changes since or around that date that might not have been updated yet. There are some bugs still, for example when you check “when designating” which prompts the page to reload without any of the user’s doing. There are gaps of information on some of the offices as well, which means that you might have to gather the rest of the information elsewhere, still.

However we appreciate the effort the WIPO has spent to provide data summarizations and will start to use this database in our work frequently.