How do I renew only some of the countries or classes in my Madrid Protocol international trademark registration?

A Madrid Protocol partial renewal guide matters because an international registration (IR) under the Madrid System is a bundle of national and regional rights held together by one WIPO registration number, one renewal cycle, and one ten-year term. Unlike a national trademark, where renewal is all-or-nothing per class, an IR can be renewed in full, renewed for only some designated Contracting Parties, renewed for only some of the classes covering a given designation, or reduced through separate post-registration recordings such as limitation, renunciation, or cancellation of effects in designated territories. Understanding which mechanism fits your situation can save thousands in renewal fees and, more importantly, can preserve rights in the countries you actually care about while letting weak or unwanted designations lapse.

This article answers the question from first principles: what partial renewal actually is, what it is not, how WIPO's simplified renewal procedures introduced in the 2020 New Regulations changed the mechanics, what each option costs, and where the traps are that cause owners to lose rights they thought were safe.

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The Direct Answer: Partial Renewal Is Possible, But Technically You Are Partially RENEWING AND PARTIALLY LIMITING OR RENOUNCING

Under Common Regulation 31 of the Madrid Protocol, an international registration may be renewed for all or some only of the goods and services listed and for all or some only of the designated Contracting Parties. So the short answer is yes: you can renew your IR for selected countries and selected classes, dropping the rest. However, the mechanics are less intuitive than most practitioners expect, and this is where a Madrid Protocol partial renewal guide earns its keep.

There are two distinct routes to a partial outcome at renewal time. The first route is to file a renewal request that covers only the designations and classes you want to keep. Under the Protocol, when you renew only some designations, WIPO processes this as a renewal for the selected Contracting Parties, and the dropped designations simply expire at the end of the current term. The second route is to record a limitation of the list of goods and services, or a renunciation of effects in one or more Contracting Parties, either before renewal or simultaneously with it, and then renew the reduced registration in full.

The distinction has real consequences. A renewal limited to some designations and a renunciation both end up narrowing the IR, but the fees, the forms used, the effective dates, and the treatment by national offices differ. In a Protocol designation, failure to renew a designation means the designation lapses when the term expires; you generally cannot revive it by paying late renewal fees because the Protocol renewal grace period only applies to the registration as renewed. Get this wrong and you can permanently lose a country you intended to keep.

The Legal Framework: Common Regulation 31 and the 2020 New Regulations

The renewal of international registrations is governed by Rules 30 and 31 of the Common Regulations under the Madrid Agreement and Protocol, which were substantially revised by the New Regulations that entered into force on February 1, 2020. Before 2020, renewal practice had accumulated inconsistencies: some Contracting Parties issued their own renewal confirmations, grace-period treatment varied, and the interaction between renewal and limitation was handled differently depending on whether the designation had been made under the Agreement or the Protocol.

The 2020 New Regulations standardized several points relevant to partial renewal. First, they confirmed that renewal may cover only some of the designated Contracting Parties, with the renewal fee calculated per designation retained. Second, they clarified the operation of the six-month grace period: a renewal fee paid within six months after the expiration of the current ten-year term attracts only an additional surcharge, currently set at 20% of the renewal fee due, and this applies uniformly across Protocol designations. Third, they simplified the interaction between renewal and other post-registration recordings, making it easier to file a limitation of goods and services through a single form (MM8, now often processed through WIPO's online post-registration services) rather than parallel paper filings.

One point that surprises many owners: since the 2020 changes, WIPO issues renewal confirmations directly, and most Contracting Parties accept the IR as renewed without any separate national renewal action. But a handful of designated offices still require or expect local steps in specific circumstances, which is why partial renewal decisions should be checked against the requirements of each Contracting Party you intend to keep.

Renewal Versus Limitation Versus Renunciation: Choosing the Right Tool

Because partial outcomes can be achieved several ways, choosing the wrong tool is one of the most common and expensive errors in Madrid practice. A renewal covering some designations only is appropriate when you want entire countries or classes to lapse permanently at the end of the term. A limitation of goods and services (Form MM8) narrows the specification while keeping all designations alive, which is useful when a national office's non-use vulnerability or class structure makes a broad specification a liability. A renunciation of effects in one or more Contracting Parties kills those designations immediately, before the term ends, which can matter when you want the lapse recorded early or when a national office charges designation-level fees you no longer want to pay.

A critical nuance: partial renewal in the sense of dropping some classes within a designation is not available for every designation. Renewal fee structures vary; some Contracting Parties charge per class and others a flat fee regardless of class count, so for flat-fee offices there is no cost saving in dropping classes, only a rights reduction. Where class-based fees apply, dropping classes genuinely reduces the renewal bill, and this is where the arithmetic of partial renewal pays off.

Practical Steps: How to Actually File a Partial Renewal with WIPO

The renewal window opens six months before expiration and the grace period runs six months after, so a renewal due on, say, March 15, 2027 can be filed from September 15, 2026 until September 15, 2027 with the surcharge. WIPO's online renewal eRenewal service lets holders renew directly without an intermediary, which was one of the major simplifications the International Bureau pushed in recent years.

The practical sequence for a partial renewal is as follows. First, pull the current IR status from WIPO's Madrid Monitor and confirm exactly which designations are active, which classes each covers, and the fee schedule of each office you intend to keep. Second, decide whether your goal is best met by renewing only some designations, or by filing an MM8 limitation first and then renewing the full registration. Third, calculate fees using WIPO's renewal fee calculator, which shows per-designation and per-class amounts. Fourth, file the eRenewal selecting only the designations and classes to retain, paying the fees, and confirming that the transaction summary matches your intent before submission. Fifth, after recording, verify in Madrid Monitor that the dropped designations show the expected status at term expiry and that retained designations reflect the new ten-year term.

Timing discipline matters enormously. If you submit a partial renewal and realize days later that you dropped a country you needed, the error may be correctable only if the original term has not yet expired and WIPO accepts an amended request; once the term lapses, the dropped designations are gone. Many practitioners therefore file renewals weeks before the deadline precisely because partial renewal decisions are irreversible in a way that other docketing events are not.

Costs and Fees: What Partial Renewal Actually Saves

Renewal fees under the Protocol are paid to WIPO and distributed to designated offices, comprising an individual fee per Contracting Party (which may be per class) or, for certain offices, a standard fee. Individual fees vary enormously: major offices in Europe, North America, and East Asia charge substantially higher per-designation individual fees than smaller offices, and the renewal individual fee frequently differs from the designation fee paid at filing because offices recalibrate them. The 20% grace-period surcharge applies to the total renewal fee, so on a registration with several expensive designations, six months of delay can add hundreds of Swiss francs.

The savings from partial renewal can be meaningful. A registration designated in, for example, ten countries with class-based fees in half of them, where each retains two classes and drops a third, saves one class fee per class-fee office. Conversely, for flat-fee offices, dropping classes saves nothing while still shrinking protection. Before choosing partial renewal, run both numbers: the fee saved per dropped designation or class, against the replacement cost of re-filing nationally if the territory becomes relevant again. Re-filing nationally means new application fees, new examination risk, loss of seniority from the IR date, and in most jurisdictions the loss of priority, which typically makes cheap designations worth keeping even when the commercial case looks thin.

Common Mistakes That Cause Permanent Loss of Rights

The most damaging mistake in partial renewal is confusing the renewal term and the grace period. Paying the renewal fee during the six-month grace period keeps the registration alive with a 20% surcharge, but if you pay after the grace period closes, the IR expires completely and the loss extends to every designation, not just the ones you intended to drop. There is no WIPO-level restoration of a lapsed IR; the only recourse is new national applications, which restart the clock.

A second mistake is misreading how dropped designations interact with dependent national rights. Under the Protocol, a designation made via a subsequent designation that is not renewed simply lapses. But where an IR rests on a basic national mark, and the basic mark itself has been reduced or renewed differently, the dependence rules can produce outcomes at odds with the owner's intent. Third, owners sometimes file a partial renewal intending it to operate as a limitation: renewing only some classes within a designation works only where the office charges per class, and attempting to drop classes in flat-fee offices generates either errors or an unintended narrowing of scope. Fourth, some offices still have local formalities or expect confirmation of renewal for particular designations; assuming uniform treatment across all Contracting Parties is a recipe for discovering, sometimes years later, that one office considered the mark unrenewed locally.

Finally, docketing errors around the renewal date itself cause the majority of avoidable losses. The ten-year term runs from the date of the international registration (or, for subsequent designations, from the date of recording), so a registration with multiple subsequent designations added at different dates still renews everything on the base registration date anniversary, a point that trips up even experienced docketing staff.

When to Act: Timing Strategy for Partial Renewal Decisions

Start the partial renewal analysis at least twelve months before the expiration date. Twelve months gives you time to audit actual use in each designated territory, which is the factor that should drive the decision, not fee minimization alone. In jurisdictions with use requirements, such as the United States, a broad specification invites non-use cancellations against goods you have never sold, and renewal is a natural moment to prune. Audit use territory by territory, classify designations as keep, prune, or investigate, and obtain quotes for national re-filing in any borderline territory before finalizing the drop list.

File the renewal, full or partial, in the six-month window before expiration whenever possible, reserving the grace period as a genuine safety net rather than a planning tool. The 20% surcharge is the least of the risks of grace-period filing: docketing pressure compresses review time, errors in designation selection are less likely to be caught, and any complication with a simultaneous MM8 limitation has less room to resolve. If a renunciation is part of the plan, consider recording it before the renewal window opens so the renewal filing is clean and cheaper.

Alternatives and When Full Renewal Is the Better Call

Partial renewal is not always the rational choice, and skepticism about fee-driven pruning is warranted. Where dropped designations cost relatively little in renewal fees but carry brand value or expansion optionality, full renewal functions as cheap insurance; re-acquiring rights later is almost always more expensive, and in competitive categories a lapsed registration is an open door for opportunistic filings by third parties. Regional designations complicate the picture further: a designation of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) covers all EU member states as a unit, so you cannot partial-renew away a single EU country, only the entire EU designation. Similarly, designations of the Benelux Office, the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI), and other regional offices move as blocks.

The alternative toolkit, when full renewal feels wasteful but partial renewal is too blunt, includes recording an MM8 limitation of the specification, assigning particular designations to a different owner (which can split the IR's portfolio across group companies), and using subsequent designations to re-add territories selectively if the IR still has life remaining. Each of these interacts with the renewal cycle differently, and a well-managed IR portfolio usually involves a mix of all of them applied on a designation-by-designation basis at each ten-year anniversary.

Key Takeaways for Madrid Renewal Planning

Partial renewal under the Madrid Protocol is a genuine, standardized mechanism confirmed by the 2020 New Regulations, but it is a scalpel that must be handled with precision: it operates at the level of designations and, where class-based fees apply, at the level of classes; it takes effect at term expiry; it is irreversible once the term lapses; and its cost savings must be weighed against the expense and risk of re-filing nationally. The renewal window runs from six months before expiration with the grace period extending six months after at a 20% surcharge. Treat every renewal anniversary as a portfolio audit date, not a payment event, and the Madrid System's flexibility becomes an asset rather than a liability.

Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice. Fee amounts and regulations change; verify current figures with WIPO and qualified trademark counsel before acting.