The WIPO Madrid API for trademark search
Access 2.1M World Intellectual Property Organization records via API. Normalized data, sub-second response, and daily sync — all through Signa's unified trademark API.
Search WIPO in one POST request.
One REST endpoint. Filter by offices: ['WIPO'] to scope to ~2.1M WIPO records, or drop the filter to search every office.
Sub-300ms p95 on WIPO queries
Exact, phonetic, fuzzy, and prefix strategies in one request.
Canonical status & raw code preserved
status.primary for filtering, status.raw_code if you need it.
Verifiable freshness
Every record includes updated_at.
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2.1M records
WIPO register indexed and queryable through one endpoint.
Daily sync
Database synced regularly with WIPO's source publication.
100% field accuracy
Validated against WIPO source data across a 4,800-field spot-check audit.
Normalized schema
93 raw WIPO status codes mapped to a canonical status object — same shape across every office.
What is WIPO?
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a United Nations specialized agency based in Geneva, founded in 1967. It is not a trademark register in the conventional sense — it is the routing system that operates the Madrid System for International Registration of Marks. A single Madrid application filed through the applicant's home office can designate up to 132 countries via 116 contracting parties, replacing the need to file separately in each one.
The mechanics matter for anyone working with the data. WIPO examines a Madrid application for formal requirements only, then publishes an International Registration (IR) and forwards designations to each chosen office. Each designated office then re-examines under its own national law and issues a provisional or final decision, usually within 12 or 18 months. Renewals are managed centrally through WIPO every 10 years. The catch is central attack: if the base mark in the home office fails or is cancelled within the first five years, every designation in the IR is cancelled with it — though holders can transform the IR designations into national applications to preserve their priority date.
WIPO's public-facing tools — the Global Brand Database (GBD) and Madrid Monitor — are HTML interfaces only. There is no real public REST API for either, no bulk feed, and no documented schema. The Madrid Monitor single-mark endpoint exists but is rate-limited to 1,000 requests per 10 minutes and returns TmView JSON that doesn't track designation-level status. Signa ingests WIPO's weekly ENOTIF event stream from the FTP server, decodes the iso-8859-1 ENOTIF XML, normalizes 12 event types (BIRTH, DEATH, PROLONG, PROCESSED, NEWNAME, RESTRICT, CORRECTION, LICENCE-BIRTH, LICENCE-NEWNAME, NEWBASE, PAID, CREATED), and maps 93 TRANTYP status codes to a canonical status object. Each Madrid designation becomes one queryable record keyed on `{IR-number}_{country}`, so you can query a designation's status in any of the 132 territories through the same API.
Unique features
- Single international application can designate up to 132 countries through 116 contracting parties — one filing replaces dozens of national ones
- Central management of renewals, recordals, name changes, and address changes — one transaction updates every designation
- Cost savings of 40–60% versus filing nationally in each jurisdiction, especially for portfolios covering 5+ countries
- Central attack risk in the first 5 years — if the base mark fails at home, every IR designation falls with it
- Transformation right — convert IR designations to national applications if central attack happens, preserving the priority date
- Each designated office re-examines under its own law and issues a provisional or final decision within 12–18 months
- Three official working languages — English, French, and Spanish — with parsing fallback required for goods and services text
- WIPO data is published as ENOTIF events (not snapshots) — each record represents a state change, not a current snapshot
WIPO Global Brand Database vs Signa.
Unlike USPTO or EUIPO, WIPO does not publish a real public API for trademark data. The Global Brand Database is a web search interface — useful for one-off lookups, useless for building anything. Madrid Monitor offers a single-mark JSON endpoint rate-limited to 1,000 requests per 10 minutes, with no bulk feed and no designation-level status tracking. The "direct" path means scraping HTML or threading a rate-limited endpoint, neither of which scales.
| Dimension | WIPO Global Brand Database | Signa |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Scrape GBD HTML, write a Madrid Monitor scraper, or build an FTP poller for the weekly ENOTIF feed | Sign up, copy API key, curl the endpoint — same shape as every other office |
| Data shape | GBD HTML pages and Madrid Monitor TmView JSON — different schemas, no designation-level status | Normalized JSON keyed on `{IR-number}_{country}` — one record per designation with canonical status |
| Coverage | GBD search is global but limited to current snapshots; Madrid Monitor returns one mark at a time | All 132 designation territories queryable through the same endpoint, with full event history |
| Freshness | GBD updates on its own schedule with no published cadence; FTP feed publishes weekly but you build the pipeline | Weekly ENOTIF ingestion plus per-record Madrid Monitor enrichment — designations queryable hours after publication |
| Status tracking | Madrid Monitor exposes IR-level status only — designation-level status requires parsing ENOTIF events yourself | 93 TRANTYP codes mapped to canonical status per designation, including central attack, transformation, and partial refusals |
Madrid is the only major trademark system where there is no honest "direct API" option. If your use case needs designation-level data for more than a handful of marks, you either build the FTP/ENOTIF pipeline yourself — DOCTYPE stripping, entity pre-decoding, iso-8859-1, 93 status codes, event-vs-snapshot reconciliation — or you call Signa.
WIPO Madrid API — Frequently asked questions
Everything developers ask before integrating WIPO data
Need something else? See our documentation
Madrid System basics
Coverage & data model
Need something else? See our documentation
Ready to search 2.1M WIPO trademarks via API?
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