Central Attack: The Five-Year Window That Decides Whether Your Client's Whole Madrid Portfolio Survives

A client files one international application through the Madrid Protocol and secures protection in twenty countries off a single home registration. It is efficient, and for five years it is fragile in a way most owners never think about. Every one of those twenty extensions depends on the basic mark back home. If the home mark is cancelled, refused, or successfully opposed within five years of the international registration date, the international registration is struck for the same goods, and all twenty national extensions fall with it. This is central attack, and it is the structural risk of the system. There is a lifeboat. The holder can transform the cancelled extensions into independent national applications and keep the original filing date, but only by filing in each country within three months of the cancellation. That three-month deadline is statutory and cannot be extended, suspended, or waived for any reason. Whether a firm catches central attack in time is a question of whether anyone is watching the basic mark, not the foreign ones.

What dependency actually means

When a client registers internationally through Madrid, the international registration is not freestanding. Under Article 6(3) of the Madrid Protocol, for five years from the date of the international registration it remains dependent on the basic application or registration at the office of origin. The international registration is the trunk. Each designated country is a branch. For five years the trunk is the home mark, and anything that kills the home mark kills the trunk.

Two points about this period are easy to misjudge:

• The clock runs from the international registration date, not from each country's grant. A subsequent designation added in year three does not get a fresh five-year tether. It inherits the dependency period already running on the original international registration.
• It is the basic mark's fate that controls, not the foreign mark's. A designated extension can be perfectly healthy in its own country and still be cancelled because something happened to the home registration it was built on. The foreign offices do not re-examine. They cancel on notice from the International Bureau.

After five years, Article 6(3) cuts the cord. The international registration becomes independent of the basic mark, and the home mark's later troubles no longer reach it. The entire risk lives inside that one window.

What counts as central attack, and the timing trap inside it

Central attack is the term for using the dependency period to take down a competitor's entire international portfolio by attacking the single mark it rests on. You do not sue in twenty countries. You go after the home registration, and Article 6(4) does the rest: when the basic mark ceases to have effect, the office of origin notifies the International Bureau, which cancels the international registration to the corresponding extent. The cancellation then propagates to every designated country automatically.

The basic mark can cease to have effect by any route. Withdrawal, refusal of the underlying application, expiry, a successful opposition, a cancellation action, a court order. The cause does not matter. The effect does.

The trap is in the timing rule, and it is the part practitioners most often get wrong. The dependency is not measured by when the home mark finally falls. It is measured by when the action against it began. Under Article 6(3), if an opposition, cancellation, or court action commenced during the five-year period, and it later succeeds, the international registration is still struck even if the final judgment lands in year six or year seven. An attack filed at four years and eleven months does not become safe because the litigation outruns the window. Counsel relying on the calendar to expire the risk should be counting from the date any challenge was filed, not from today.

Transformation: the three-month lifeboat

When central attack succeeds, the holder is not without recourse. Article 9quinquies of the Protocol provides transformation. The holder may re-file the cancelled extension as an ordinary national or regional application in each designated country, and that application is treated as though it had been filed on the date of the international registration, carrying any priority the international registration enjoyed. The original filing date survives even though the international registration did not.

In the United States, this is codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1141j and implemented at 37 CFR § 7.31. The mechanics are strict:

• The deadline is three months. The request must be filed within three months after the date the International Bureau records the Article 6(4) cancellation. Note the trigger: the clock runs from the International Bureau's processing of the cancellation, not from the home office's underlying action.
• It cannot be extended. The three-month period is a statutory requirement. The Director cannot extend, suspend, or waive it, even in an extraordinary situation. Miss it in a country and the rights in that country are gone for good.
• It is available only for Article 6(4) cancellations. Transformation exists solely to cure central attack. It is not available where the international registration lapsed for failure to renew, was cancelled at the holder's own request, or was limited for any other reason.

Transformation preserves the priority date, but it is not free and it is not automatic. It is a separate filing in every country the client cares about, each with its own national fees, its own counsel, and its own fresh examination as a domestic application.

Dimension	Original Madrid extension	After transformation
Filing date / priority	Date of the international registration	Preserved, same date carries over
Cost to maintain	One renewal through WIPO	Separate national filing and renewal in each country
Examination posture	Granted extension of protection	Re-examined fresh as a national application
Trigger to act	None	File in each country within three months of cancellation

The strategic reading is plain. Transformation rescues the priority date, which is usually the thing worth most, but it converts an efficient single registration into a scattered set of national filings and adds cost in every jurisdiction at once. It is a recovery, not a restoration.

Why firms miss the window they could have closed

Every protection above depends on one thing the firm does not control by filing well: knowing that the basic mark is under threat while the dependency period is still live, and knowing the moment the cancellation is recorded so the three-month transformation clock can be met in each country.

The information is split across two registers. The threat originates at the office of origin, where the opposition or cancellation against the home mark is filed. The deadline originates at the International Bureau, where the Article 6(4) cancellation is recorded. A firm watching only its client's foreign extensions sees nothing until those extensions are already cancelled, by which point part of the three-month window may have run unnoticed. A firm watching the home mark sees the central attack coming while there is still time to defend it at the root, and catches the cancellation entry the day it posts.

This is the kind of split signal Redrift's Watch is built to surface: a new opposition or cancellation against a client's basic registration during the dependency period, and the Article 6(4) entry the moment it appears, with the underlying record attached, so counsel can defend the home mark or move to transform before the clock runs. The fabric surfaces the filing and the entry. The judgment about whether to fight at the root or transform abroad, and in which countries, stays with the lawyer.

The discipline is two questions, asked in order. First, when does the dependency period close, counting from the international registration date, and has any challenge to the basic mark been filed before that date. Second, if a cancellation is recorded, in which countries does the client need the priority enough to file a transformation within three months. The firms that lose a client's international portfolio are rarely the ones that mishandle the transformation. They are the ones who learned the home mark had fallen only after the foreign extensions were already gone.