Trademark Filing in Japan and South Korea for Indian Brands

Your Indian trademark certificate stops at Indian customs. In Tokyo and Seoul, it is just paper. The day your first shipment of tea, textiles, generics, or software lands in Japan or South Korea, the only rights that count are the ones on the JPO or KIPO register.

Both countries are strict first-to-file jurisdictions. Both examine applications against earlier marks on their own. And in both, the most common squatter is not a stranger — it is your own distributor, filing your brand in his name while the partnership is still warm.

This guide covers the two filing routes open to Indian businesses, the script quirks — katakana in Japan, hangul in Korea — and the timelines to plan around in 2026.

First-to-file, with no patience for latecomers

India is first-to-file, and so are Japan and South Korea — but with fewer of the prior-use safety nets Indian founders quietly rely on. In both countries, the register decides ownership almost entirely. Proving you used the brand first in India rarely rescues you from someone who filed first locally.

The classic failure pattern: an Indian exporter signs a distributor, ships for two years, then discovers the distributor owns the brand locally. Buying it back — or litigating — costs multiples of what filing would have.

The fix costs less than one shipment’s margin: file in both countries before, not after, your first commercial conversation there.

File before the first distributor meeting, not after the first dispute.

Route one: a Madrid Protocol designation from India

Japan and South Korea are both members of the Madrid Protocol, which India joined in 2013. That means you can cover both through a single international application filed via the Indian Trade Marks Registry, designating Japan and Korea alongside any other members you need.

The mechanics: you need a basic Indian application or registration first, since the international filing mirrors it. Fees are paid in Swiss francs and vary by country and class count. Each designated office then examines the mark under its own law and must raise any refusal within the treaty’s time limits — silence means protection.

The trade-offs are the standard Madrid ones, covered in detail in our guide to the Madrid Protocol for Indian brands: one filing and one renewal date across countries, but a five-year dependence on your Indian base mark — if that collapses, the international registration falls with it. A well-prosecuted Madrid filing is usually the cheapest way to cover Japan and Korea together with other export markets.

Route two: national filings at the JPO and KIPO

The direct route is a national application at the Japan Patent Office (JPO) or the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), filed through a local attorney. It costs more per country than a Madrid designation, but buys three practical advantages.

• No dependence on your Indian mark. A national registration stands alone, immune to central attack.
• Local counsel from day one. If the office raises objections, someone who argues before that office daily is already on the file — under Madrid, you scramble to appoint one mid-refusal.
• Freedom to tailor the mark. National filings make it easy to file script versions — katakana and hangul — alongside your Roman-letter mark.

Many Indian exporters run a hybrid: Madrid for the broad portfolio, national filings in the two or three markets that carry most of their revenue or counterfeit risk.

Japan quirks: katakana, and opposition after registration

Japanese consumers read and pronounce foreign brands through katakana, the script used for loanwords. The JPO compares marks on sound, appearance, and meaning, so a katakana rendering that sounds like your mark is squarely in play — both as a threat and as an asset.

Standard practice for serious brands is to file the Roman-letter mark and its katakana transliteration, either as separate applications or a combined mark. That locks down how the market will actually say and write your name, and simplifies enforcement against local copycats who work in katakana only.

Two procedural quirks stand out. First, Japan’s opposition comes after registration: third parties get a two-month window from publication of the registration to oppose. Your certificate can arrive and then be challenged. Second, registrations become vulnerable to cancellation if the mark goes unused in Japan for three consecutive years — so keep dated evidence of sales and marketing there.

In Japan, the market will write your brand in katakana whether you register it or not.

Korea quirks: hangul, and opposition before registration

South Korea mirrors Japan on the fundamentals — first-to-file, full examination against earlier marks, three-year non-use cancellation — but flips the opposition stage. KIPO publishes accepted applications before registration, and third parties oppose within the published window. Only after that does the mark register.

The hangul logic parallels katakana: Korean consumers will render your brand in hangul, so filing the hangul transliteration alongside the Roman-letter version closes the gap a local copyist would otherwise walk through. KIPO also offers expedited examination in defined circumstances, which exporters facing an imminent launch can use to compress the timeline.

Korea is also unforgiving on specification drafting. Get the goods and services right against the Nice Classification before filing — our free trademark class finder is the place to start that exercise.

Timelines, renewals, and what it costs to wait

In a clean case — no refusal, no opposition — expect registration in roughly a year in either country, sometimes faster in Japan, with expedited options available in both. A refusal on similarity or descriptiveness typically adds six months to a year of argument through local counsel.

Both countries grant ten-year terms, renewable indefinitely. Both cancel for three years of non-use. Neither requires use before filing — so there is no reason to wait for launch.

Every month of delay is a month in which a distributor, a competitor, or a squatter can file first and force you to buy back your own name.

The cheapest trademark in Tokyo or Seoul is the one filed before anyone there has heard of you.

The filing plan for an Indian exporter

1. Clear the mark in all relevant scripts. Search Roman, katakana, and hangul versions. A professional trademark search across target registers comes first.
2. Anchor the Indian filing. Your Madrid application needs an Indian base, so complete your trademark registration in India — ₹4,500 per class in government fees for startups and MSMEs.
3. Pick the route by portfolio size. Two countries only: consider national filings. Japan and Korea within a wider export map: Madrid usually wins on cost and administration.
4. File transliterations in your core market. Katakana in Japan, hangul in Korea, at least for your house brand.
5. Calendar the maintenance. Ten-year renewals, three-year use evidence, and a watch on both registers for copycat filings.

Japan and South Korea reward exporters who treat the trademark as part of the shipment, not an afterthought. File early, file in the scripts your customers will actually read, and both registers will work for you instead of against you.