You designated Colombia through the Madrid Protocol and WIPO has notified you of a provisional refusal, or the Colombian office has issued an office action (requerimiento) that you cannot respond to without a Colombian representative. A domestic deadline starts to run from the Colombian notification, not from the day WIPO’s notice reached you, and it is Colombian law, not the Protocol, that decides how long you have. We are trademark attorneys in Colombia acting as local representatives for Madrid Protocol holders: we read the refusal, establish the actual deadline in the file at the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC), and file the response.
Designating Colombia is not the same as filing from Colombia
This page is for holders who designated Colombia from abroad. In that direction the basic mark is at your own office, not at the SIC: the Madrid Protocol has the international application filed with WIPO «through the intermediary of the Office with which the basic application was filed or by which the basic registration was made», and calls that office the Office of origin (Article 2(2)). Colombia is one of the Contracting Parties you named in the application or added later, so nothing has to be filed with the SIC before Colombia is designated.
A business that files its international application through the SIC, with a Colombian application or registration as the basic mark, is going the other way. The SIC is then its Office of origin, and Colombia cannot be one of the designated countries: protection is extended only at the request of the applicant or holder, but «no such request can be made with respect to the Contracting Party whose Office is the Office of origin» (Article 3bis). Law 1455 of 2011, by which Colombia approved the Protocol, contains the same rule in Spanish: «tal petición no podrá hacerse respecto de una Parte Contratante cuya Oficina sea la Oficina de origen» [no such request may be made with respect to a Contracting Party whose Office is the Office of origin]. SIPI, the SIC’s public register, keeps the two directions apart: a designation of Colombia is filed as «SD Solicitud de Extensión Territorial», and an international application sent abroad through the SIC as «SD Solicitud de Registro Internacional».
How often Colombia issues provisional refusals: what SIPI shows
ADALET LEGAL S.A.S., a Colombian law firm, counted it file by file in SIPI. On October 18, 2026 we listed every designation of Colombia whose SIPI filing date falls in 2024, 5,786 files, and read the complete record of a random sample of 360 of them, about one in sixteen, drawn month by month. 152 of the 360 had received at least one provisional refusal from Colombia: 42.2%, with a margin of error of about 5 points either way.
| Sample of 360 designations of Colombia dated 2024 | Files | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Received at least one provisional refusal | 152 | 42.2% |
| First refusal on the merits, from the SIC’s own examination | 80 | 22.2% |
| First refusal on formal grounds (formal requirement) | 61 | 16.9% |
| First refusal based on an opposition | 11 | 3.1% |
| No provisional refusal | 208 | 57.8% |
Of the 152 designations provisionally refused, 57 are registered today, for all or part of their goods; 45 are refused; 37 are still under examination at the SIC, all but one of them with an appeal on file; and 13 were abandoned, renounced or archived. The type of refusal makes most of the difference.
A refusal on formal grounds arrives early, a median of 1.6 months after WIPO notified the designation to Colombia, and it is usually cured: 40 of the 61 designations that received one are registered. Ten of those 61 ended abandoned, which is what Article 144 of Decision 486 provides when the requirement is not met in time. In the ten formal refusals we opened at random, the ground was the same in every one: «la vaguedad de productos y/o servicios» [vague goods and/or services].
A refusal on the merits arrives late, a median of 11.0 months after notification, and it is the hard one. Of the 80 designations refused that way, 14 are registered, 8 of them after an appeal revoked the refusal; 39 are refused; and 26 are waiting for the decision on an appeal. Refusals based on an opposition were few, 11 of 360.
In every sampled file that has one, the SIC’s first statement to WIPO, a provisional refusal or a grant of protection, is dated within the 18 months Colombia declared under Article 5(2)(b) of the Protocol: the median was 11.4 months and the longest 16.5. Designations that received no refusal had their grant of protection a median of 12.5 months after notification. For all 5,786 designations, this is what SIPI showed on the day we read it:
| All 5,786 designations of Colombia dated 2024, status in SIPI on October 18, 2026 | Files | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Registered («Registrada») | 3,971 | 68.6% |
| Refused («Negada») | 892 | 15.4% |
| Under substantive examination («Bajo Examen de Fondo») | 647 | 11.2% |
| Abandoned, archived, cancelled, renounced or expired | 256 | 4.4% |
| Other stages (formal examination, published, opposition) | 20 | 0.3% |
How we counted. SIPI opens one file for each designation of Colombia, with the case type «SD Solicitud de Extensión Territorial». The population is every such file whose «Fecha de Presentación» falls between January 1 and December 31, 2024, listed month by month with SIPI’s advanced search on October 18, 2026; the sample is a random draw of about one file in sixteen within each month, 360 in all. A designation counts as provisionally refused when its documents include the notice the SIC sends WIPO, listed in SIPI as «TRANRF Provisional refusal of protection». The type of the first refusal comes from the SIC act issued with it, «IRD 46 Requerimiento de forma» for a formal requirement and «IRD 49 Niega sin oposición» or «IRD 54 Niega parcialmente sin oposición» for a refusal on the merits, or from a later decision «con oposición» when the notice came first. We opened 31 of the notices, the 11 linked to an opposition and 20 chosen at random among the others, and each one matched its classification.
Statuses are those SIPI showed on October 18, 2026, and «Registrada» includes designations protected for only part of their goods. The margin of error is for a 95% confidence level. We took no personal data, only dates, statuses and the type of each act, and the list of sampled file numbers is available to anyone who wants to check it. Our separate study of SIC timing for national applications is published in Spanish.
Why a refusal can reach you long after you expected it
Colombia deposited its instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol on May 29, 2012, and the Protocol entered into force in respect of Colombia on August 29, 2012, under WIPO notification Madrid (Marks) No. 195.
That same notification records the declarations Colombia made, and two of them matter to every holder. Under Article 5(2)(b) of the Protocol, Colombia declared that the one-year time limit for notifying a refusal is replaced by eighteen months. Under Article 5(2)(c), a refusal based on an opposition may be notified to the International Bureau after that eighteen-month period has expired.
Two details of that period are worth getting right. It does not run from your international registration or from the date you designated Colombia: under Article 5(2)(a) it runs from the date the International Bureau sends the notification of the extension to the Colombian office. And the late refusal allowed by Article 5(2)(c) is not open-ended: it applies only where the office informed the International Bureau, before the eighteen months expired, that oppositions might still be filed, and the refusal must then be notified within one month from the end of the opposition period and in any case no later than seven months from the date that period began.
So eighteen months of silence do not by themselves mean your Colombian designation is safe: if a third party filed an opposition, a refusal can still arrive within those limits. Treating the eighteen-month mark as a finish line is the most common and most expensive mistake we see in these files.
The Protocol sets the office’s deadline; Colombian law sets yours
Article 5 governs how long Colombia has to refuse. It does not govern how long you have to answer. Once the refusal is issued, the procedure is the Colombian one, governed by Decision 486 of the Andean Community, and the deadline depends on what kind of refusal you received.
Decision 486 of the Commission of the Andean Community has no official English version, so the rules below are quoted in Spanish, with an unofficial translation in brackets.
If the refusal follows an opposition, Article 148 applies: the office notifies the applicant «para que dentro de los treinta días siguientes haga valer sus argumentaciones y presente pruebas, si lo estima conveniente» [unofficial translation: so that, within the following thirty days, it may put forward its arguments and submit evidence if it sees fit], and on request it grants, once only, an additional thirty days for evidence alone. If what you received is a formalities objection, Article 144 gives sixty days from notification to complete the missing requirements, and warns that otherwise the application «se considerará abandonada y perderá su prelación» [unofficial translation: shall be deemed abandoned and shall lose its precedence]. Article 150 then applies either way: the registrability examination takes place once the Article 148 term has expired or, where no opposition was filed, directly; and where an opposition was filed the office rules on the opposition and on grant or refusal by a resolution, which is the decision you may then challenge.
There is one case Decision 486 does not cover with a term of its own: a provisional refusal raised by the office on its own examination, with no opposition behind it. There the period to respond comes from Colombian domestic procedure and from the refusal itself. In every case, the Regulations under the Protocol require any notification of provisional refusal, ex officio or opposition-based, to state the time limit for filing a request for review or an appeal (Rule 17(2)(vii)) and the authority with which it must be filed (Rule 17(2)(ix)). Read that paragraph of your notification first; it is the one that binds you. In the 31 SIC notices we opened in SIPI, it read «30 días laborales en Colombia» [30 business days in Colombia] in every refusal based on an opposition, «60 días laborales en Colombia» in every formal requirement and «1 mes + 10 días laborales en Colombia» [one month plus ten business days in Colombia] in every refusal on the merits.
Decision 486 settles how those terms are counted, and the answer works in your favour. Article 5 provides that «cuando los plazos se señalen por días, se entenderá que éstos son hábiles» [unofficial translation: where terms are set in days, they are understood to be business days] and that where the last day is a non-business day the term runs to the next business day. Article 4 adds that terms subject to notification are counted «a partir del día siguiente» [unofficial translation: from the day following] the notification, not from the day the document was issued. Even so, the first thing we do is not to draft: it is to pull the file and establish the exact expiry date, in writing, before anything else.
What the refusal usually says, and what it really means
Most refusals in Colombia rest on Article 136(a) of Decision 486. The article bars registration of «aquellos signos cuyo uso en el comercio afectara indebidamente un derecho de tercero, en particular cuando: a) sean idénticos o se asemejen, a una marca anteriormente solicitada para registro o registrada por un tercero, para los mismos productos o servicios, o para productos o servicios respecto de los cuales el uso de la marca pueda causar un riesgo de confusión o de asociación» [unofficial translation: signs whose use in commerce would unduly affect a third party’s right, in particular where they are identical or similar to a mark previously applied for or registered by a third party, for the same goods or services, or for goods or services in respect of which the use of the mark may cause a likelihood of confusion or association].
Two things follow. First, a refusal citing a mark you have never heard of is common and is rarely fatal: what matters is how close the signs and the goods really are. Second, the response is not a translation of the arguments that worked in your home jurisdiction. In practice, examiners here compare signs visually, phonetically and conceptually, and weigh the trade channels and the relevant consumer, so the response has to be built for that examination.
What happens if you do not respond
The file does not freeze and wait for you. If the refusal came from an opposition and you let the term lapse, the office still rules, but it rules with your opponent’s case on the record and none of yours. If what lapsed was a formalities objection in the national proceeding, Article 144 is explicit that the application is deemed abandoned and loses its precedence over later filings. For an international designation the effect is best stated precisely: what is lost is protection in Colombia, not the precedence of your international registration, whose formal examination belongs to the office of origin and to the International Bureau.
There is a separate route, but it points at the other side’s registration rather than at your abandoned application. Where a registration was granted in breach of Article 136 or in bad faith, Article 172 of Decision 486 allows a relative nullity action against it, and states that «Esta acción prescribirá a los cinco años contados desde la fecha de concesión del registro impugnado» [unofficial translation: this action shall be time-barred five years from the date of grant of the challenged registration]. It is a window to act against a cited mark, not a substitute for answering your own refusal on time.
How we work with holders and with foreign counsel
Send us the WIPO notification, the international registration number and, if you have it, the Colombian file number. We aim to send a short written opinion within one business day of receiving the documents: what was refused, on what ground, which mark is cited, the applicable term and our candid assessment of the prospects. Confirming the exact expiry date requires access to the file at the SIC, so that date is given once we have consulted it. If the case is weak we say so before you spend on a response, because limiting the goods or negotiating a letter of consent is sometimes the better outcome.
We act as local representative before the Colombian office. We work both directly for holders and as Colombian correspondents for trademark firms abroad, reporting in English, with flat fees quoted in advance rather than hourly billing. More than 20 years of experience in industrial property and more than 3,000 trademarks handled mean we know how these grounds are usually argued before this office, which is what separates a refusal worth fighting from one worth settling.
If you have not filed yet and are deciding between a Madrid designation and a national application, start with trademark registration in Colombia. If the issue is an opposition rather than a refusal, see trademark oppositions and appeals before the SIC. Spanish-speaking holders and foreign counsel can read our Spanish page on provisional refusals at denegación provisional en Colombia.
Who handles your file
Andrés Felipe López Gutiérrez, founding partner, leads every provisional refusal file himself: he reviews the notification with you, agrees the response and remains your point of contact until the file closes. He has more than 20 years of experience in industrial property, has handled more than 3,000 trademarks before the SIC and is responsible for the legal content of the trademark guides on this site. He holds a specialisation in Commercial Law from Universidad del Rosario and one in Public Management and Administrative Institutions from Universidad de los Andes.
His trademark work includes availability searches and registrability opinions, SIC filings, oppositions on both sides, appeals against refusals, cancellation actions for non-use, renewals and assignments, coexistence agreements, the watch of entire portfolios and Madrid Protocol designations.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I have to respond to a provisional refusal in Colombia?
It depends on the type of refusal, and the notification states it. Where it follows an opposition, Article 148 of Decision 486 gives thirty days, plus a single additional thirty-day term granted on request for evidence only. Where it is a formalities objection, Article 144 gives sixty days. Under Articles 4 and 5 of the same Decision those days are business days and are counted from the day following the notification. Where the refusal comes from the office’s own examination, the term is the one stated in the notification itself: in the notices of that kind we read in SIPI, one month plus ten business days.
Can Colombia refuse my mark after eighteen months?
Yes, if the refusal is based on an opposition. Colombia declared both the eighteen-month refusal period under Article 5(2)(b) of the Madrid Protocol and, under Article 5(2)(c), the possibility of notifying an opposition-based refusal after that period expires. That late refusal is bounded: the office must have warned the International Bureau before the eighteen months ran out, and must notify within one month from the end of the opposition period and no later than seven months from its start.
Do I need a representative in Colombia to respond?
In practice, yes: the response is filed in the Colombian proceeding, in Spanish, and holders abroad appoint a local attorney to act for them. The SIC’s notices add that all documents filed with it «deberán ser redactados en español» [must be written in Spanish]. Appointing us requires a power of attorney signed by the holder; we tell you in advance what form it must take.
What happens to my international registration if the Colombian designation is refused?
A refusal affects protection in Colombia only. Your international registration and the other designations are unaffected, which is why a refusal in one country is worth answering on its own terms rather than abandoning the file.
The refusal cites a mark I have never heard of. Is the case lost?
No. Article 136(a) of Decision 486 covers two situations: identical or similar signs for the same goods or services, or for goods or services where use of the mark may cause a likelihood of confusion or association. How close the cited mark really is, and whether the goods actually meet in the market, is precisely what the response argues.
Do you work with foreign trademark firms as local counsel?
Yes. We act as Colombian correspondents for firms abroad, report in English, and quote the fee before the work starts.
What does a total provisional refusal of protection from Colombia mean?
It is the notice by which the SIC tells WIPO that protection cannot, for now, be granted in Colombia for any of the goods and services of your designation; a partial one lists the goods and services affected (Madrid Regulations, Rule 17(2)(vi)). The Regulations allow it to rest on the office’s own grounds, on an opposition, or on both (Rule 17(1)(a)). It is not final: the notice states the time limit to request review or appeal and the authority to address (Rule 17(2)(vii) and (ix)). In our SIPI sample of 2024 designations, 57 of the 152 provisionally refused are registered today.
What does it mean when a provisional refusal from Colombia is confirmed?
It means the SIC has completed its procedure and decided to keep the refusal for all the goods and services. The Regulations require the office to send WIPO a statement to that effect once all procedures before it are completed (Rule 18ter(3)); if it lifts the refusal in whole or in part, it sends instead a statement indicating the protection granted (Rule 18ter(2)). In SIPI both outcomes are filed under «Final Decision: Confirmation or Withdrawal of Provisional Refusal». A confirmed refusal concerns Colombia only: the international registration and the other designations are unaffected.
Can I add Colombia to an international registration I already hold?
Yes, by a subsequent designation. The Protocol allows a request for territorial extension to be made «subsequently to the international registration», and the extension takes effect from the date it is recorded in the International Register (Article 3ter(2)). The holder, or the office of the holder’s Contracting Party, presents it to WIPO (Madrid Regulations, Rule 24(2)(a)), and the holder must still meet the conditions of Article 2 at that time (Rule 24(1)(a)). Colombia then examines it like any other designation; SIPI labels the file a «Designación posterior».
Talk to a lawyer
Send us a message on WhatsApp with your international registration number and we will come back to you with the deadline and the options once we have reviewed the notification. An initial enquiry does not create an attorney-client relationship.
If you are still choosing between the two routes for a new mark, see Madrid Protocol or national filing in Colombia.
Related pages
Trademark registration in Colombia · Madrid Protocol or national filing in Colombia · Trademark oppositions and appeals in Colombia · Andean trademark opposition in Colombia · Trademark non-use cancellation in Colombia · Colombia trademark search · Colombia trademark agent for foreign IP firms · Power of attorney for Colombia · Registering an Indian trademark in Colombia · Registering a Chinese trademark in Colombia · Registering an EU trademark in Colombia · Registering a UK trademark in Colombia · Registering a Canadian trademark in Colombia · Registering a Korean trademark in Colombia · Denegación provisional en Colombia (Spanish)