For example, under the Protocol, it is possible to obtain an international registration on the basis of a pending trademark application, so that a trademark owner can effectively apply for an international registration at the same time or immediately after an application is filed in a member jurisdiction. In comparison, the agreement requires the trademark owner to already have an existing registration in a member jurisdiction, which can often take several months or even years. In addition, the agreement does not provide for the possibility of “converting” international registrations that have been “centrally attacked”. Accession to the Convention or Protocol includes accession to the “Madrid Union”. As of June 2019[Update], there were 104 members from 120 countries. The original treaty has 55 members, all of whom are equally parties to the Protocol (as Algeria on 31 September). Having entered the Madrid Protocol in October 2015, all members of the Madrid Agreement were also members of the Madrid Protocol, and many aspects of the Madrid Agreement no longer had practical effect). The term “Madrid Union” may be used to describe the legal systems that are parties to the Agreement or the Protocol (or both). [4] Although OAPI fully implements the Madrid Protocol, the fact that its founding treaty, the Bangui Agreement, does not confer legal personality on the organization means that it can be legally argued that OAPI does not have the power to conclude an international agreement on behalf of its member states. However, this has not yet been tested in court.

In 1966 and 1967, an attempt was made to solve this problem by concluding a new treaty that would reflect the necessity of the time and not the world of the 1890s when the agreement was adopted. This led to the drafting of the Treaty on the Registration of Marks (TRT), which was adopted in Vienna in 1973 and entered into force in 1980 with five Contracting States, namely Burkina Faso, Congo, Gabon, the Soviet Union and Togo. In the absence of new accessions to the TRT and the small number of registrations since its inception, it was clear that the TRT was unlikely to replace the Madrid Agreement. In the run-up to the implementation of a multi-jurisdictional (or at least pan-European) Community trade mark (CD), the relevance of the Madrid System was examined. Pressure on WIPO to maintain its relevance and strengthen the agreement by increasing membership, possibly through amendments, has increased. This led to the introduction of the Madrid Protocol, according to which a Community trade mark registration could be a `foundation` or `homeland` registration, on the basis of which an international registration could then be established. This mechanism is called “link determination”. The Protocol was signed by many countries as a result of significant lobbying efforts by WIPO, including most of the current members of the Madrid Agreement and some countries that are members of the European Union but were not members of the Madrid Agreement. The Protocol entered into force on 1 December 1995 and entered into force on 1 April 1996. The Protocol has been in force since 1996 and has 100 members[5], making it more popular than the agreement, which has been in force for more than 110 years and has 55 members. [4] The main reason why the Protocol is more popular than the Agreement is that it introduced a number of amendments to the Madrid System that have significantly increased its usefulness to trademark owners.

The office of the Contracting Party with which you register or register your basic mark shall be referred to as the “Customs Office of Origin”. In your international application, you can select the Contracting Parties in which you wish to protect your mark, or you can extend the geographical scope of your international registration under the Madrid System to a later date. João Francisco Sá Inventa International View website Tel: +351 213 150 970 Two important recent developments in international trademark law were the accession of the United States and the European Union to the Madrid Protocol on November 2, 2003 and October 1, 2004 respectively. With the inclusion of these jurisdictions in the Protocol, most major commercial jurisdictions have acceded to the Madrid System. The following African jurisdictions are considered the first jurisdictions to file: Madrid now allows the filing, registration and maintenance of trademark rights in more than one jurisdiction, provided that the target jurisdiction is a party to the system. The Madrid System is administered by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. There are 90 countries that are part of the Madrid system. The Madrid Union currently has 107 members covering 123 countries. These members account for more than 80% of global trade, with potential for expansion as membership grows. Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Cape Verde, DrK, Djibouti, Egypt, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, OAPI (including the following Member States: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, People`s Republic of the Congo, Côte d`Ivoire, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo), São Tomé, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tunisia and Zambia.

Galgut & Galgut has been registering trademarks on behalf of the customer for over 40 years. This table summarizes the validity and effectiveness of IR in African Member States: Angola, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania in particular are not members of the Madrid Union. As these five countries are among the 10 largest economies in Africa, this has a significant impact on international filing strategies, as applicants are obliged to file directly with the national IP offices in these regions. This reduces the economy of the Madrid Union for companies that are most interested in protecting their trademarks in major African countries by market value. Some of the major trading countries such as the United States, Japan and Canada, which have a large number of applications at the national level, have not acceded to the Madrid Agreement due to another perceived flaw in the system: if the registration of the dwelling, on which an international registration was based, was subject to a “central attack”, the international registration would be cancelled or restricted to the same extent, in which the registration of domicile was revoked or restricted. WIPO conducts a formal examination of the international application, but Contracting Parties may have specific requirements and procedures with respect to applications, registrations or designations through the Madrid System. .