This Guide is primarily intended for applicants and holders of international registrations of marks, as well as officials of the competent administrations of the Member States of the Madrid Union. It leads them through the various steps of the international registration procedure and explains the essential provisions of the Madrid Agreement, the Madrid Protocol and the Common Regulations.

In many jurisdictions, IP rights are only granted after a thorough examination of formal and substantive requirements. The EPO-EPC Guidelines for Examination (available at www.epo.org) detail the practice and procedure to be followed when examining patent applications before the European Patent Office (EPO) in accordance with the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its Implementing Regulations. Our Indexed version improves on the official version by abbreviating entries and grouping the entries at the front to allow quick scanning, using page numbers to speed up getting to the correct page, indicating sections with significant changes in the last 3 years, and modifying the contents to fully use the page size to give better overviews of paragraphs. This book is suitable as a desktop reference for everyday use by attorneys and administrators. IP law is highly complex and continuously changing, so always double check the status with the latest official resources - this version is expected to be legally valid from 1 Mar 2021 to 28 Feb 2022. This book is also suitable for anyone studying European Patent Law and exam candidates. For European Qualifying Exam (EQE) candidates, this is the official version for EQE 2022 Main Exam & Pre-Exam.

These Guidelines are designed both for general users of patent information, as well as for those involved in producing Patent Landscape Reports (PLRs). They provide step-by-step instructions on how to prepare a PLR, as well as background information such as objectives, patent analytics, concepts and frameworks.

This Guide aims to assist users in searching for technology information using patent documents, a rich source of technical, legal and business information presented in a generally standardized format and often not reproduced anywhere else. Though the Guide focuses on patent information, many of the search techniques described here can also be applied in searching other non-patent sources of technology information.