Research · International trademarks
Where U.S. trademark owners get refused abroad
U.S. businesses are the single largest users of the Madrid System. We followed 14,870 international registrations of U.S. origin registered 2019–2022 (153,551 country designations, 10.3 per mark) through examination in each country. The spread is enormous: from under 1% of designations refused in Australia and the United Kingdom to roughly half in China and Thailand.
Where U.S. owners file, and where they get stuck
The 25 offices below receive the bulk of U.S. designations. Two rates matter. The provisional rate is how often the office raised an objection at all: the paperwork burden. The still refused rate is how often that objection was never overcome: the real loss rate. Offices that are demanding on paper but lenient in the end (Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia) look very different from offices where a refusal tends to stick (China, Thailand, India).
| Designated office | Still refused | Still refused | Provisional | Protected | U.S. designations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| European Union (EM) | 5.9% | 18.7% | 94.0% | 10,139 | |
| Canada (CA) | 13.7% | 68.4% | 84.4% | 9,140 | |
| United Kingdom (GB) | 0.9% | 13.3% | 96.3% | 9,123 | |
| Australia (AU) | 0.4% | 33.6% | 88.7% | 7,851 | |
| China (CN) | 48.1% | 60.7% | 51.8% | 7,201 | |
| Japan (JP) | 12.8% | 53.0% | 86.8% | 7,096 | |
| Mexico (MX) | 12.8% | 24.9% | 85.4% | 6,444 | |
| South Korea (KR) | 3.4% | 55.9% | 82.3% | 5,696 | |
| India (IN) | 25.2% | 63.2% | 73.0% | 5,350 | |
| Singapore (SG) | 5.4% | 37.1% | 91.7% | 4,717 | |
| New Zealand (NZ) | 3.0% | 35.5% | 94.2% | 4,298 | |
| Brazil (BR) | 13.1% | 29.3% | 86.0% | 3,935 | |
| Switzerland (CH) | 6.3% | 16.6% | 93.2% | 3,718 | |
| Russia (RU) | 15.1% | 36.5% | 84.9% | 3,173 | |
| Thailand (TH) | 52.5% | 89.8% | 44.7% | 3,008 | |
| Israel (IL) | 8.0% | 44.8% | 88.6% | 2,949 | |
| Norway (NO) | 8.4% | 33.7% | 85.7% | 2,944 | |
| Türkiye (TR) | 6.5% | 14.4% | 91.8% | 2,802 | |
| Philippines (PH) | 3.4% | 79.0% | 59.7% | 2,760 | |
| Indonesia (ID) | 8.4% | 14.8% | 87.5% | 2,735 | |
| Vietnam (VN) | 21.1% | 31.2% | 77.2% | 2,714 | |
| Colombia (CO) | 14.6% | 31.4% | 84.9% | 2,470 | |
| Malaysia (MY) | 20.0% | 37.5% | 72.3% | 2,164 | |
| Ukraine (UA) | 2.5% | 7.5% | 97.1% | 1,468 | |
| Egypt (EG) | 6.9% | 8.7% | 20.5% | 1,444 |
received a provisional refusal refusal still stands
China: the refusal that sticks
China is the fifth most-designated office for U.S. owners and by far the costliest. 60.7% of U.S. designations draw a provisional refusal there, and 48.1% are still refused, 36.4% in full. Only 51.8% end up protected. Three things practitioners consistently point to: China's strict first-to-file rule, which lets an earlier local filing (including a squatter's) block the U.S. owner outright; a sub-class system within each Nice class, so a conflict in one sub-class refuses the goods in it even when the rest of the class is clear; and the cost of contesting a refusal, which leads many owners to abandon the designation rather than fight.
For a U.S. brand, the single most valuable pre-filing step in the Madrid process is a Chinese-language and sub-class clearance search in China, before the international application is filed, not after the refusal.
Canada, Japan and Korea: hard on paper, soft in the end
Canada objects to 68.4% of U.S. designations (it adopted USPTO-style goods specificity when it joined Madrid in 2019), but only 13.7% stay refused and 84.4% are protected. Japan (53.0% provisional, 12.8% standing) and South Korea (55.9% provisional, 3.4% standing) follow the same pattern: expect an office action, budget for a local agent's response, expect to win.
India, Mexico and Brazil: the mid-tier
India refuses 25.2% of U.S. designations outright and its protection rate is 73.0%; Mexico (12.8%) and Brazil (13.1%) sit close behind. Thailand is the outlier among smaller markets: 89.8% of U.S. designations are provisionally refused and 52.5% stay refused. The Thai office demands goods descriptions at least as specific as the USPTO's and examines distinctiveness strictly; a response needs a local agent, and a large share of designations are simply never pursued past the refusal. Only 44.7% end up protected.
Europe, the UK and Australia: near-automatic
The European Union office (EUIPO) refuses 5.9% of U.S. designations, the United Kingdom 0.9%, Australia 0.4%, New Zealand 3.0%. These offices examine on absolute grounds only (descriptiveness, deceptiveness) and leave relative grounds (conflicts with earlier marks) to opposition by the earlier owner. A U.S. mark that is already registered at home is therefore rarely refused; the risk moves to the opposition period instead, which this data does not capture.
What to do with this
- Sequence your countries. Designate the near-automatic offices freely; treat China, India and Thailand as filings that need a local clearance search and a response budget.
- Consider a direct national filing in China. Practitioners often prefer it to a Madrid designation there: sub-class coverage can be chosen deliberately and a refusal is handled locally from the start.
- Draft the goods once, for the strictest office you designate. Canada and the USPTO both reject class-heading-style descriptions; specific goods avoid most provisional refusals everywhere.
- Watch the mark, not just the filing. In the offices that do not examine relative grounds, the conflict shows up as somebody else's later application. A free logo watch or the risk assessment covers the U.S. and Madrid registers.
The reverse view, how the USPTO treats foreign owners' designations of the United States, is the companion article: the USPTO provisionally refuses 95.9% of international designations; 2.6% stand. Per-office detail, by class and by origin, is on the international pages.
Methodology
- Source. WIPO Madrid Monitor daily update files (ST.96 XML), ingested since July 2025: every international registration with any recorded activity in that window, 96,915 registrations carrying 974,457 designations in the cohort below. Each record carries the full event history of every designation, so outcomes are read from the events themselves, not inferred.
- Cohort. International registrations registered 2019–2022. Older years are increasingly dominated by post-grant events (U.S. §71 cancellations, renewals); newer years have not resolved.
- Provisional refusal = the office recorded a total or partial provisional refusal at any point. Still refused = the latest examination outcome is a total or partial refusal, with no later grant of protection; refusals overcome, reversed on review, or followed by a "possible opposition" or "intermediate status" notice are counted as overcome. Post-grant invalidations are excluded from refusals. Protected = a grant of protection (Rule 18ter or equivalent) is on record.
- Known bias. The feed is an activity delta, so registrations with no event since July 2025 are absent. Within the cohort this under-samples quiet, trouble-free designations slightly, which would make true refusal rates marginally lower than shown. Offices differ in how completely they report to WIPO; a few (e.g. Jersey, some African offices) report almost no examination events and show near-zero rates for that reason.
- Refresh. Figures recompute daily after ingest; the page shows the date of the data it renders. Percentages are rounded to one decimal.
International data © WIPO, re-used under CC BY 4.0; outcome normalisation is ours and WIPO bears no responsibility for it. Full details on the methodology and data sources pages.
Download the data
- us-origin-by-office.csv: U.S.-origin designations by designated office (≥400 designations)
CSV, UTF-8, one row per office/class/year with counts and percentages. Free to reuse with a link to this page.