Introduction to the Madrid Monitor and Strategies

If you are looking to understand the gist of the Madrid Monitor in 5 minutes, you’ve come to the right place. The Madrid Monitor is an online platform that tracks and records all international trademarks filed under the Madrid System. This article will cover the following subtopics:

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1. How to use the search function
2. How to see the status of a trademark
3. How to use the Madrid Monitor for business development purposes

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1. How to use the search function

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The platform is easy to use and straightforward. Upon entering the website (https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/), you will see a search function. Type in words, numbers, dates, classes, or countries to begin your search. Additionally, there are other search options on the left, including the advanced search and image search.

In this example, we have made a search using the IR number.

Upon clicking on the desired trademark, you will find all the relevant information, such as the date of registration and information of the holder and representative.

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2. How to see the status of a trademark

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Checking the status of your trademark is important due to the deadlines involved in the application and registration process. For example in the case of USPTO, applicants are required to submit post-registration documents following the IPO’s processing time of approximately three weeks. There are also cases where the status inquiry shows that the filing is lost. In this case, the applicant would be responsible for reaching out to the IPO and inquiring about a status update for your trademark. The Madrid Monitor provides an easy way to check the status of your trademark online, as we explain in the following steps.

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Scrolling down you will also be able to see in which countries this trademark has been filed through the Madrid System. In this case, it would be in China, Japan, and the US.

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At the bottom of the page, you will find all recent activities regarding the status of the trademark. For example, you can see that the USPTO has issued a provisional refusal, notified on May 20, 2021.

The official provisional refusal of protection, issued by the USPTO, can be accessed when clicking on the blue “PDF” button next to “US”. It may take a few seconds to load.

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If you want to see an organized list of status updates without having to scroll through a series of text, simply click on the “real-time status” tab on the top of the page.

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Finally, you will also be able to access an aggregate of all marks under the Madrid System. These trademarks are published in the WIPO Gazette two weeks after a transaction is issued. In the example below, we have searched for all refusals issued in all jurisdictions in the most recent Gazette.

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3. How to use the Madrid Monitor for business development purposes

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The Madrid Monitor is a great start to keeping tabs on international cases that come through the Madrid System. You will have access to the Gazettes free of charge, and within these Gazettes are the tens of thousands of refusals issued from various countries around the world! These are tens of thousands of cases that require professional support.

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Although the refusals published in the Gazette are two weeks old, it might still be worth a shot to reach out to firms in certain jurisdictions offering your services, in case they have yet to find a representative yet for their case.

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However, two weeks is still a considerable time period, and there is a high possibility that the holder / representative of the trademark has already procured a trademark attorney in your country. And what if you want to contact multiple holders or representatives at once? You’d have to spend your precious time looking for the cases you are interested in, and copy pasting all the details of the case to every single email manually.

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This is where WeCrest steps in with the necessary tools to save you time, effort, and money when expanding your international client base. Not only does it list all the latest refusal cases in your jurisdiction (updated every 24 hours), there is an on-platform email function that provides you with multiple templates for you to edit (with placeholders to prevent the copy pasting of numerous IR numbers and holders), and also automatically attaches the official refusal notice in PDF. Through automation, you will be able to offer your services to a significantly larger pool of attorneys effortlessly.

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If you want to find out more about what WeCrest can do for you, we would be happy to give you a free 20-minute demo, helping you identify which tools could be beneficial for your firm.