The OBI API for trademark search

Trademark administration in Greece sits in an unusual place compared to most EU member states. Historically, OBI — the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation (Οργανισμός Βιομηχανικής Ιδιοκτησίας), founded under Law 1733/1987 and operational since 1 January 1988 — was responsible for patents, utility models, and industrial designs, while the national trademark register was administered by the General Secretariat of Commerce (Γενική Γραμματεία Εμπορίου) within the Ministry of Development. That split ended with Law 4796/2021, which transferred the Trademark Office to OBI; the move was practically completed in May 2022. OBI is now the sole competent authority for the registration of trademarks in Greece and maintains the National Trademark Register from its headquarters at Varvaki & Momferatou Street in Athens.

Greek substantive trademark law was rewritten by Law 4679/2020, which transposed the EU Trademark Directive (2015/2436) into Greek law. The current regime introduced full opposition examination on absolute and relative grounds before the Trademark Committee, a three-month opposition window measured from publication of the application on OBI's website, and modernized provisions for non-traditional marks, certification marks, and revocation actions. Annual filing volumes at OBI hit roughly 7,000 applications in 2024 — a 15-year record — concentrated in technology (class 9), retail (class 35), and R&D/design services (class 42). Greece is also a Madrid Protocol member, so international registrations designating GR are routed through WIPO and coexist with the direct OBI national filings. Because Greece is an EU member state, an EU trademark filed at EUIPO automatically covers Greece without any separate OBI step, and most multi-country filers default to EUTM.

OBI currently exposes the Greek register through a public web search tool on obi.gr — searchable by word element, holder, registration number, class, status, and date — together with EUIPO's TMview aggregator, which mirrors the Greek collection alongside every other EU national office. There is no public OBI REST API and no published bulk-data feed comparable to DPMAconnectPlus or Data INPI; programmatic consumers either scrape the OBI search UI, lift records out of TMview, or piece together filings from BOPI-style publication notices. Signa is building its OBI connector against the official register and TMview's Greek collection for a Q4 2026 launch; on release it will normalize the Greek-language register, the Law 4679/2020 event vocabulary, the Greek-script + Latin transliteration of mark text, and Madrid designations of Greece into the same unified schema used for USPTO, EUIPO, and every other office on the platform.