🇧🇪 Country guides

Trademark registration in Belgium

How to protect a brand in Belgium: like the Netherlands and Luxembourg, Belgium has no national-only mark — you file a Benelux trademark with BOIP, or an EU mark.

LG
The LawyerGo Team
· 5 min read
Trademark registration in Belgium

Belgium does not run its own national trademark register. For a Belgian business, "national" protection means a Benelux trademark.

One mark for three countries

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pool their trademark system in the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP). A single Benelux filing protects the mark across all three — there is no Belgium-only registration. Applications can be made in the region’s working languages.

Scaling up: EU and beyond

For protection throughout the EU, the EU trade mark (EUTM) via the EUIPO is the one-stop option; the Madrid Protocol extends a mark to non-EU markets.

Process and term

You file by class under the Nice Classification; BOIP checks absolute grounds, publishes, and allows an opposition by earlier-rights holders. Protection lasts ten years, renewable.

For foreign brand owners

If your market is only Belgium, you still register the whole of Benelux — worth weighing against an EUTM. A verified Belgian colleague can advise the scope and file it.

Fees and rules change — confirm with admitted Belgian counsel.

LG
The LawyerGo Team
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