TL;DR: Trademarks in Argentina are registered with INPI (Instituto Nacional de la Propiedad Industrial) under Trademark Law No. 22,362, in a first-to-file system where registration, not use, creates the right. The process runs from clearance search through filing, examination, a one-day publication, and a 30-day opposition window, to registration for a renewable ten-year term. The single most important recent change: following reforms in late 2025 and 2026, INPI no longer examines applications for conflicts with similar existing marks. That responsibility now sits entirely with you, which makes a proper clearance search before filing far more important than it used to be.
Quick overview: This guide covers the Argentine trademark framework, the significant 2025-2026 INPI reforms and what they mean in practice, the step-by-step registration process, realistic timelines, the new UMAPI fee system, what happens after registration (renewal, declarations of use, non-use cancellation), and the specific position for foreign applicants filing into Argentina.
Argentina has just changed how trademarks are registered, and the change matters more than most businesses realise. Until recently, when you filed a trademark application with INPI, the office itself would check whether your mark conflicted with similar marks already on the register. That safety net is gone. Under reforms introduced through Resolution 583/2025 and refined in 2026, INPI now examines applications only on absolute grounds, distinctiveness and public policy, and leaves conflicts with similar earlier marks to be raised by third parties through opposition.
The practical result is a faster process with far less protection built into it. Your application is more likely to sail through examination, and you are far more exposed to being opposed by someone whose mark you never checked for. This guide walks through the whole process as it now works, and explains what the reforms mean for anyone filing in Argentina.
Trademarks in Argentina are governed by Trademark Law No. 22,362 and administered by the Instituto Nacional de la Propiedad Industrial (INPI), the national industrial property office.
Two features of the Argentine system shape everything else. First, Argentina operates a first-to-file system, which means rights are granted through registration rather than through use. Prior use of a mark does not, on its own, secure your rights. If someone else registers your brand name before you do, they hold the registration, regardless of who used it first commercially. Second, trademark rights in Argentina are strictly territorial. A registration in Argentina protects you in Argentina only. It gives you nothing in Brazil, Chile, the United States, or anywhere else, just as a registration elsewhere gives you nothing in Argentina. If you are expanding into Latin America, this is the point most businesses underestimate, and it is why our guide on the risks of not registering your trademark applies with particular force in a first-to-file jurisdiction.
Argentina uses the Nice Classification, the international system for categorising goods and services, so the classes you know from other jurisdictions apply here too. Registration is granted per class, and the classes you choose determine both the scope of your protection and the cost of your filing.
What Changed in 2025 and 2026: The Reform That Reshapes Everything
This is the section most existing guides have not caught up with, and it changes how you should approach an Argentine filing.
Resolution 583/2025, published in December 2025, narrowed INPI’s own examination to absolute grounds only: lack of distinctiveness, public policy concerns, and identical marks covering overlapping goods and services. INPI no longer examines applications on relative grounds, meaning it no longer checks whether your mark is confusingly similar to an earlier registration, whether it uses someone’s name or likeness without consent, or whether it might mislead. Those objections now arise only if a third party actively files an opposition.
The same resolution restructured the procedural sequence with effect from March 2026. Formal and substantive examination now happens immediately after filing and before publication. If nothing is flagged, the application is published for a single day, and if no opposition is filed within 30 days, registration is granted. The intention is a faster, more predictable process, and on that measure it should succeed.
Resolution 139/2026, published in May 2026, went further by eliminating the informal “third-party observations” mechanism for applications filed from March 2026 onwards. Previously, a third party could raise concerns informally without filing a full opposition. That route is now closed. The only way to challenge someone else’s application is a formal opposition, filed within the strict 30-day window from publication. The resolution also removed the automatic conversion of unmaintained oppositions into observations: if an opponent fails to pay the official fee within 15 business days, they are treated as having lost interest and the application simply proceeds.
What this means for you, practically. Three things follow, and they matter.
Your clearance search is now doing work that INPI used to do for you. Because the office will not flag a confusingly similar earlier mark, an application can pass examination and reach publication even when it conflicts squarely with an existing registration. You will only discover the problem when the owner of that mark opposes you, by which point you have spent time and money on a filing that may fail. A thorough search before filing has moved from good practice to genuinely essential.
The opposition window is now the entire battleground. With observations abolished and relative grounds handled exclusively through opposition, that 30-day period is the only mechanism, for you and against you. It is a strict, peremptory deadline.
Active monitoring matters more than before. If you hold Argentine trademark rights, nobody at INPI is watching for applications that conflict with your mark. Protecting your registration now requires watching the Trademark Gazette yourself, or having someone watch it for you, and opposing within the window when something conflicting appears.
The Step-by-Step Registration Process
With that context, here is how a trademark application actually proceeds through INPI.
Step 1: Classification. Identify the goods and services your mark will cover and assign them to the correct Nice classes. This decision shapes both your protection and your cost, since fees are charged per class. Getting it wrong, too narrow and you leave gaps, too broad and you pay for protection you cannot support, is one of the more common and expensive early errors. Our guide to trademark class search explains how classification works.
Step 2: Clearance search. Search INPI’s database for identical and similar existing marks in your classes. Under the new regime this step carries the weight it always should have: INPI will not do this analysis for you, so a conflicting earlier mark that you fail to find will surface as an opposition rather than an examiner’s objection.
Step 3: Filing. Submit the application to INPI with the mark, the applicant’s details, the classes, and the goods and services description, and pay the official fee. If you are a foreign applicant, a signed power of attorney is required, and if you are claiming Paris Convention priority from an earlier foreign filing, the certified priority document must be submitted within the applicable deadline.
Step 4: Examination. INPI conducts formal and substantive examination, now limited to absolute grounds: is the mark distinctive, does it offend public policy, is it identical to an earlier mark for overlapping goods or services. Under the post-March 2026 procedure, this examination happens before publication rather than after.
Step 5: Publication. If the application clears examination, it is published in the Trademark Gazette (Boletín de Marcas). Under the streamlined procedure, publication is for a single day.
Step 6: The opposition period. Third parties have 30 calendar days from publication to file a formal opposition. This is now the only route by which a conflict with a similar earlier mark can be raised. If no opposition is filed, the application proceeds.
Step 7: Registration. INPI grants the registration and issues the certificate. The registration is valid for ten years from the date of registration, renewable indefinitely in ten-year terms.
How Long Does It Take?
Honesty is more useful than a confident number here, because published estimates vary widely, from around eight months for straightforward cases to eighteen months or more, with some practitioners reporting longer where INPI has a backlog.
What can be said with more confidence is the direction of travel. The 2025-2026 reforms were designed specifically to shorten timelines by removing the slowest and most subjective part of the examination, and the restructured sequence (examine first, publish once, grant if unopposed) should compress the process meaningfully compared with the old regime. An uncontested application under the new procedure should move faster than the historical averages suggest. An opposed application, by contrast, can extend considerably, since the dispute must be resolved before registration can proceed.
The practical planning point: file early. In a first-to-file system where the office no longer screens for conflicts, the cost of delay is that someone else may file first, and you may not find out until you are the one being blocked.
What It Costs: The New UMAPI System
Argentina restructured its official fee schedule in 2026, and the change is worth understanding because it affects how you budget.
Under Resolution 75/2026, effective from April 2026, INPI introduced a new tariff unit called the UMAPI (Unidad de Medida Arancelaria de la Propiedad Industrial). The UMAPI’s initial value was set at ARS 360, defined as one-hundredth of the fee for a new trademark application in a single class. Crucially, the resolution introduced a monthly indexation mechanism: from May 2026, the peso value of the UMAPI is updated every month based on the previous month’s consumer price index, and published on INPI’s portal.
Two practical consequences follow. First, official fees in pesos are now a moving target, adjusted monthly for inflation, so a quote given in pesos has a limited shelf life. Second, because fees are charged per class, the number of classes you file in is the single biggest driver of your official cost. Fee discounts are available for SMEs and individual applicants, which is worth checking before you file.
Beyond the official fees, your total cost includes professional fees for the clearance search, the filing itself, and any response to objections or oppositions. Our trademark registration in Argentina service works on fixed fees agreed upfront, so the professional side of the cost is known before anything begins.
After Registration: Renewal, Use, and Cancellation
Registration is not the end of the obligation, and three post-registration points catch businesses out.
The ten-year term and renewal. An Argentine registration lasts ten years from the registration date and can be renewed indefinitely in further ten-year terms. Renewal should be filed within the six months before expiry, and a six-month grace period is available afterwards with a surcharge. Miss both, and the registration lapses.
Declarations of use. Argentina requires a sworn declaration of use, confirming the mark has been used in Argentina, at defined points in the registration’s life, including a mid-term declaration during the ten-year term. These are administrative but mandatory, and failing to file them puts the registration at risk.
Non-use cancellation. Use is not required to file or register a trademark in Argentina. But once registered, if a mark is not genuinely used for five consecutive years, a third party can apply to cancel it for non-use. In practice this means that registering defensively across classes you never intend to trade in offers weaker protection than it appears, since those unused classes are vulnerable to cancellation.
Filing Into Argentina as a Foreign Business
If you are a business outside Argentina looking to protect your brand in the Argentine market, a few points apply specifically to you.
Your existing registration elsewhere gives you nothing in Argentina. Territoriality means an Indian, US, UK, or EU registration confers no rights in Argentina; you must file locally. Argentina is a Paris Convention member, so if you file in Argentina within the priority period from your home filing, you can claim that earlier priority date, which can be decisive in a first-to-file system. You will generally need a power of attorney, and local representation is required in practice for handling INPI procedure and correspondence, which is exactly the role our Argentine counsel performs. And because the mark is examined and enforced under Argentine practice, the wording of your goods and services description should be prepared for Argentina rather than copied from your home registration.
If Argentina is part of a wider regional or global brand strategy, it is worth reading this alongside our guides on registering a trademark in India and registering a trademark in the US, since the differences in procedure and in what each office actually examines are substantial.
Common Mistakes When Filing in Argentina
A few errors recur often enough to be worth naming. Skipping or under-doing the clearance search, which is now the single most dangerous shortcut given that INPI will not catch conflicts for you. Choosing classes carelessly, either too narrowly (leaving your actual business unprotected) or too broadly (paying for classes you cannot support and that are vulnerable to non-use cancellation). Assuming prior use protects you, which it does not in a first-to-file system. Missing the 30-day opposition deadline, whether as an applicant needing to respond or as a rights holder needing to oppose someone else. And filing a combined word-and-logo mark while assuming it protects the word alone, when in fact protection attaches to the configuration as filed. Our piece on the most common mistakes in trademark applications covers the broader pattern.
Conclusion
Registering a trademark in Argentina is, on paper, a straightforward first-to-file process through INPI: classify, search, file, publish, wait out the opposition window, register for ten years. What has changed, and what most guides have not yet absorbed, is where the responsibility sits. INPI no longer checks whether your mark conflicts with a similar earlier registration, and the informal observations route has been abolished. The clearance search and the 30-day opposition window now carry the weight the office used to carry.
For a business entering the Argentine market, that means two things. File early, because in a first-to-file system with a faster process, the cost of hesitating is that someone else registers your brand first. And search properly before you file, because the office will not save you from a conflict you failed to find.
If you are planning to protect a brand in Argentina, we handle the clearance search, INPI filing, and any opposition, with fixed fees and local Argentine counsel. You can find the details on our trademark registration in Argentina page, or see the full range of our legal services in Argentina.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I register a trademark in Argentina?
You register a trademark in Argentina by filing an application with INPI (Instituto Nacional de la Propiedad Industrial) under Trademark Law No. 22,362. The process involves classifying your goods and services under the Nice Classification, running a clearance search, filing the application, examination by INPI, publication in the Trademark Gazette, a 30-day opposition period, and registration if no successful opposition is filed. Registration lasts ten years and is renewable indefinitely.
Does INPI check whether my trademark is similar to an existing one?
No, not any more. Following Resolution 583/2025, INPI’s examination is limited to absolute grounds, meaning lack of distinctiveness, public policy issues, and identical marks covering overlapping goods and services. It no longer examines relative grounds such as similarity to earlier marks or likelihood of confusion. Those conflicts are now raised only if a third party files a formal opposition, which makes a thorough clearance search before filing considerably more important than it used to be.
How long does trademark registration take in Argentina?
Timelines vary, with published estimates ranging from around eight months for straightforward cases to eighteen months or more, depending on INPI’s workload and whether the application is opposed. The 2025-2026 reforms were specifically designed to shorten the process by narrowing the examination and streamlining the procedural sequence, so uncontested applications under the new procedure should generally move faster than historical averages suggest. An opposed application takes considerably longer, since the opposition must be resolved first.
How much does it cost to register a trademark in Argentina?
Official INPI fees are charged per class, so the number of classes you file in is the main driver of official cost. Since Resolution 75/2026, fees are calculated in a tariff unit called the UMAPI, whose peso value is adjusted monthly for inflation, which means official fees in pesos change month to month. Discounts are available for SMEs and individual applicants. On top of official fees, you should budget for professional fees covering the clearance search, filing, and any response to objections or oppositions.
Do I need to use my trademark in Argentina to register it?
No. Use is not required to file or register a trademark in Argentina, which operates a first-to-file system where registration creates the right. However, once registered, a mark that is not genuinely used for five consecutive years becomes vulnerable to cancellation for non-use by a third party. Argentina also requires sworn declarations of use at defined points during the registration’s life, so use does become relevant to maintaining the registration even though it is not needed to obtain it.
Can a foreign company register a trademark in Argentina?
Yes. Trademark rights are territorial, so a registration in another country gives you no protection in Argentina, and a foreign business wanting protection in the Argentine market must file locally with INPI. Argentina is a Paris Convention member, so priority can be claimed from an earlier qualifying foreign application filed within the priority period. Foreign applicants will generally need a power of attorney and local representation to handle INPI procedure and correspondence.
Written by María Laura Cristín
María Laura Cristín is an Argentine attorney admitted to practise before the Santa Fe Bar Association since 2015. She advises businesses and international clients on trademark registration, intellectual property, corporate law, contracts, market entry, regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, and commercial matters in Argentina. Her local knowledge helps ensure trademark filings before INPI comply with Argentine legal and procedural requirements, while providing on-the-ground support wherever local representation is needed.
This article is published for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. Argentine trademark procedure and official fees are subject to change, and INPI’s fee schedule is now revised monthly. Always consult a qualified Argentine attorney for advice specific to your situation.
