Trademarks
The international route looks cheaper on the invoice and more expensive when a central attack succeeds. Here is how to actually make the decision.
09 July 2026 · 9 min read · StellarStart GLOBAL
Every founder protecting a brand in more than two countries eventually faces the same fork: file one international application under the Madrid Protocol, or file separate national applications in each market. The honest answer is that neither is better. They are different instruments with different failure modes, and the right choice follows from your home registration, your markets and your risk tolerance.
A Madrid filing bundles a basic fee of 653 Swiss francs (903 for a colour mark), a supplementary fee of 100 francs per class beyond three, and either a standard complementary fee of 100 francs per designated member or that member’s individual fee. For designations charging only the standard fee, Madrid is dramatically cheaper than national filings with local counsel in each country. For members with high individual fees, the gap narrows, and once you factor in responding to provisional refusals through local attorneys anyway, a three-country filing can cost much the same either way. Madrid’s cost advantage compounds with breadth: at eight or ten designations it is rarely beaten.
For five years, the international registration depends on the home application or registration. If the home mark is refused, withdrawn or cancelled in that window, the entire international registration falls with it. Transformation into national applications is possible but expensive and deadline-driven. If your home application is young, contested, or filed in a jurisdiction with active opposition practice, you are stacking risk on an unsettled foundation. A business with a granted, incontestable home registration faces a very different calculus from one filing Madrid off the back of a week-old application.
National filings give you a local attorney of record in each market from day one, specifications drafted for local practice, and no dependency between registrations. Madrid gives you one renewal date, one record to update on assignment or change of name, and one place to expand later through subsequent designation. Portfolio administration is where Madrid quietly earns its keep: renewing twelve national registrations through twelve firms is an annual project, renewing one international registration is an afternoon.
Two or three countries with active refusal risk: file nationally. Five or more countries on a solid home registration: Madrid, usually without much debate. In between, run both numbers, including realistic refusal-response costs, and weigh how much the five-year dependency actually worries you given the state of your home mark. This is a decision to make deliberately once, not to discover during an opposition.