Trademark Registration in Spain (OEPM & EU Trademark): Fixed Fees, Lawyer-Led

Spain, the EU, or the world: the three routes to protecting a brand

Registering a trademark, registro de marca, is how a name, logo or slogan stops being something you merely use and becomes something you legally own and can enforce. From Spain there are three routes, and choosing between them is the first real decision, well before any form gets filled in. A Spanish national mark at the OEPM, the Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas, protects you in Spain only. An EU trademark at the EUIPO in Alicante protects you across all 27 EU member states with one single registration. And the Madrid System, run by WIPO in Geneva, lets you extend protection to over 130 countries through one international application, using Spain as your office of origin.

Route	Territory	Official fee, 1 class	Typical timeline unopposed	Term
Spanish markOEPM	Spain only	€127.88 e-filing	5-8 months	10 years, renewable
EU trademarkEUIPO	All 27 EU member states	€850	4-8 months	10 years, renewable
InternationalMadrid System, WIPO	Any of 130+ member countries you designate	Per case, WIPO calculator	12-18 months across designations	10 years, renewable

The right choice depends on how you actually trade. A restaurant in Malaga rarely needs 27 countries; an online brand selling into France and Germany almost always does. We settle this on the free call, with the fee mathematics in front of you, before you spend a cent.

Start with a clearance search, not a filing

Here is the part the filing platforms skip: neither the OEPM nor the EUIPO will check whether your mark conflicts with an earlier registration and refuse it to protect you. The offices examine formalities and absolute grounds, whether the sign is distinctive enough to be a trademark at all, but conflicts with earlier marks only surface when the earlier owner files an opposition, months after you have already paid the official fee. Filing blind is how applicants lose both the fee and half a year.

Our clearance work starts from 200 EUR + IVA and is not a database printout: it is a search of the relevant registers plus a written opinion from a lawyer telling you whether the name is genuinely available, where the risks sit, and how to adjust the goods and services specification to file around them. If you go ahead and file with us, the search fee is credited in full against our filing fee, so a properly checked application ends up costing the same as a blind one.

Registering a Spanish trademark at the OEPM

The Spanish national mark is the right tool when your market is Spain: a local shop, restaurant, clinic, academy or service brand. It gives you the exclusive right to the sign for the goods and services you register it for, across all of Spain, for 10 years, renewable indefinitely. Applications are filed per Nice class, the international classification that divides all goods and services into 45 categories, and both the official fee and ours scale with the number of classes.

Our fixed fee is from 490 EUR + IVA for one class, and that figure already includes the 127.88 EUR official electronic filing fee, the OEPM rate in force since 1 April 2026. Each additional class is from 160 EUR, including the 82.84 EUR official fee per extra class. We always file electronically; paper filing exists but carries a higher official fee at the OEPM, so there is no reason to use it.

Timeline expectations, honestly stated: if nobody opposes, count on roughly 5 to 8 months from filing to registration. The formal exam and publication take about a month, then Spanish law opens a 2-month window in which owners of earlier marks can oppose, and after that the OEPM completes its substantive examination and grants the mark. If an opposition lands, add several months, sometimes more than a year if the case goes to appeal. Spain also has a separate, often overlooked figure, the trade name or nombre comercial, which protects the sign identifying your business activity rather than a specific product; it runs on the same OEPM fee schedule and we advise on whether you need one, the trademark, or both.

The EU trademark: 27 countries, one Spanish-language filing

The EU trademark, filed at the EUIPO in Alicante, is a single unitary right automatically valid in all 27 EU member states. One application, one registration, one renewal date, and, crucially for many of our clients, the whole file can run in Spanish, since Spanish is one of the EUIPO’s five official languages. For a business selling, or planning to sell, beyond Spain, it is almost always more economical than filing country by country.

Our fixed fee is from 1,390 EUR + IVA for one class, including the 850 EUR official EUIPO fee. A second class adds 90 EUR, including the 50 EUR official fee, and each class from the third onward adds 230 EUR, including the 150 EUR official fee. Unopposed, an EU trademark typically registers in 4 to 8 months: a formalities check, publication, then an opposition window commonly cited as 3 months, and registration. The breadth of the right cuts both ways, though: because the mark is unitary, a successful conflict based on an earlier right in any single member state can bring down the whole application, which is precisely why the clearance search matters more at EU level, not less. Qualifying small businesses may also be able to recover part of the official filing fee through the EUIPO’s SME Fund; we check your eligibility as part of the engagement.

Going international: the Madrid System through Spain

Once you hold or have applied for a Spanish or EU base mark, the Madrid System lets you extend protection internationally with one application filed through WIPO, designating any combination of its 130-plus member countries, the US and UK among them. It is usually far cheaper and administratively lighter than instructing separate attorneys in each country.

Pricing here is necessarily two-part, and we keep the parts visible. Our professional fee is from 650 EUR + IVA for preparing and filing the international application through the office of origin. The WIPO official fees are passed through at cost, with no markup: they depend on the countries you designate, the number of classes, and even whether the mark is in colour, so we quote them per case using WIPO’s own fee calculator and show you the calculation. Each designated country then has its own examination period, typically 12 to 18 months, so full certainty across every market takes longer than a single OEPM or EUIPO filing.

One structural point matters for foreign founders: using Spain as your office of origin requires a genuine Spanish or EU nexus, nationality, domicile, or a real commercial establishment here. A founder or company with no EU presence cannot take this route directly, but a Spanish company can. This is one of several places where forming a Spanish company quietly unlocks the rest of the toolbox: the OEPM route, the Madrid route through Spain, and everything our corporate services team then keeps compliant around it.

Who we can file for directly, stated honestly

Most trademark websites gloss over this; we would rather you know before you engage anyone. We file directly, in-house, for clients who are resident or established in Spain or the EEA, individuals and companies alike. That covers foreigners living in Spain, EU-based businesses, and foreign-owned Spanish companies.

The cleaner long-term fix for a non-EU founder who is serious about the Spanish market is usually structural: incorporate in Spain, then file through your Spanish company. The company opens the OEPM and Madrid routes, and the trademark becomes an asset on its balance sheet. We handle the company formation and the trademark as one coordinated project when that is the right shape for you.

After filing: oppositions, watching, renewals and transfers

A trademark is not a certificate you frame and forget. Three things keep it alive and worth owning.

Oppositions, in both directions. If a third party opposes your application, we defend it: from 650 EUR at the OEPM and from 900 EUR at the EUIPO. If someone else files a mark confusingly similar to yours, the burden is on you to oppose within the window, 2 months from publication at the OEPM, commonly cited as 3 months at the EUIPO. We file oppositions from 550 EUR at the OEPM, where usefully no official fee applies at all, and from 950 EUR at the EUIPO, including the commonly cited 320 EUR official opposition fee. If either office raises an objection or a provisional refusal against your own application, we respond from 300 EUR, drafted by the lawyer who filed it, not a support ticket.

Watching. Neither the OEPM nor the EUIPO will alert you when someone files a conflicting mark; the registries publish and move on. Our trademark watch subscription monitors newly published applications in your classes and jurisdictions and flags conflicts while the opposition window is still open, which is the only time catching them is cheap.

Renewals and transfers. Registrations last 10 years and renew indefinitely. We handle OEPM renewals from 390 EUR, including the 148.06 EUR official renewal fee for the first class, and EUIPO renewals from 1,250 EUR. The OEPM allows late renewal for up to 6 months after expiry, at the price of a 25 then 50 percent surcharge on the official fee, and after that the mark lapses; watch clients never get near that cliff because every renewal is diarised. When a brand changes hands, or moves between your operating company and a holding structure, we record the transfer so it is enforceable against third parties; the OEPM official recordal fee is 29.86 EUR per registration, and we quote the professional fee per case since transfers range from a one-line assignment to a multi-mark portfolio deal, often alongside contract review of the underlying agreement.

Fixed fees, and why a lawyer rather than a filing platform

The form-filling platforms are cheap for a reason: they resell access to a public form. The advertised price usually excludes the official fees you will pay anyway, the search is either absent or an automated dump with no opinion attached, and when an examiner objects or an opposition lands, the real costs begin, handled by whoever picks up the ticket.

Our model is the opposite and it is deliberately boring: every fee is published on this page before you ever contact us, each price states the official fee it already includes so you can see our professional fee honestly, and Raquel Cobos, abogada colegiada, leads the file personally, from the availability opinion through specification drafting to any office action or opposition. The specification of goods and services, the part platforms auto-fill, is the part that decides ten years later whether you can actually stop a copycat. That is lawyer work, and it is priced as a fixed fee, not an hourly meter.

How it works with our office

Tell us the name or logo and what you sell, on the free call. We run the clearance search and send you a written opinion with a clear recommendation: file as-is, adjust, or pick another battle. You approve the route and the classes with the full price, official fees included, in front of you. We file, track every deadline, answer anything the office raises, and hand you the registration certificate at the end, then, if you want it, keep the mark watched and renewed so it never lapses. The same office coordinates the corporate side when the trademark is part of something bigger: a new Spanish company, a franchise or licensing agreement, or ongoing corporate and compliance work, so your brand, your contracts and your company are not being handled by three providers who never speak.