The HIPO API for trademark search

The Szellemi Tulajdon Nemzeti Hivatala (Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, HIPO) is Hungary's national authority responsible for examining and registering trademarks, patents, utility models, designs, and geographical indications. Headquartered in Budapest and operating under the Ministry of Justice, HIPO maintains the Hungarian trademark register under Act XI of 1997 on the Protection of Trademarks and Geographical Indications. The register holds an estimated corpus of roughly 400,000 records — direct Hungarian national filings plus Madrid Protocol designations of Hungary — and receives approximately 5,000 to 7,000 new national applications per year, with substantial additional volume arriving through WIPO Madrid designations and EUTMs.

Because Hungary is an EU member state, most applicants who want broad European coverage file an EU trademark (EUTM) at EUIPO — a single EUTM covers all 27 EU countries, Hungary included, for not much more than a Hungarian national fee. HIPO's national register exists for the case where applicants only need Hungarian protection, want a Hungarian seniority date before extending via Madrid, are responding to local prior rights that would block a wider EUTM, or want examination in Hungarian under Act XI of 1997 with appeals to the Hungarian courts. Hungary acceded to the Madrid Protocol on 3 October 1997 (in force from that date), so Hungary can be designated through WIPO as an alternative to a direct HIPO filing — Madrid HU designations are then republished by HIPO into the national register with a three-month opposition window starting from publication.

HIPO exposes the register through E-kutatás (E-Research), the free public web search at epub.hpo.hu/e-kutatas — accessible without registration, covering Hungarian national trademarks, geographical indications, and the Hungarian portion of international and EUTM records in force in Hungary. There is no official public REST API or bulk data feed: the published surface is the E-kutatás web UI plus the weekly Szabadalmi Közlöny és Védjegyértesítő (Patent and Trademark Gazette) PDF publication every other Wednesday. Signa is building its HIPO connector for Q4 2026; on launch it will normalize the Hungarian-language register, the Act XI status vocabulary, diacritics-preserving mark text, and Madrid designations of Hungary into the same unified schema used for USPTO, EUIPO, and every other office.