Does your protection travel across borders

You create an illustration in one country. A client in another puts it on packaging sold in several more. The image crosses borders in a day. Your rights follow it in some ways and not in others, and the difference depends on the kind of IP.

The short version: copyright reaches most countries automatically. Patents and trademarks do not. You get them country by country, or through an international filing system that still ends in a decision by each country.

Copyright has a shared international framework

The Berne Convention covers works whose author is a national of a member country, and works first published in a member country. For those works, three rules apply in every other member country 1:

• National treatment. Each country protects your work the way it protects works by its own authors.
• No formalities. You do not have to register or file anything to be protected.
• Independence. Your protection in one country does not depend on protection in your home country.

WTO members that have not joined Berne are bound by the same three principles through the TRIPS Agreement 1.

What you get abroad is each country's own copyright law, not one worldwide right. Berne sets a minimum term, generally the author's life plus 50 years, and each country applies its own term above that floor, its own exceptions and its own remedies 1. So you have nothing to file to be protected abroad. When a problem comes up in another country, the question to ask is what that country's copyright law says.

Patents follow a different route

Patents are territorial. A patent protects your invention only in the country or region where it was filed and granted, and there is no "world patent" 2. You have three ways to seek protection abroad 2:

1. File a national application with the patent office of each country you want.
2. File with a regional patent office, which grants a patent valid in some or all of its member states.
3. File one international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). It has the effect of a national application in the PCT member states. You can use it if you are a national or resident of a PCT member state, and in most cases you file it with your own national patent office 3.

The PCT does not grant a patent. Each national or regional office still decides whether to grant one 3. The international-phase fees are listed on WIPO's PCT fees page 5.

Two deadlines decide most of your options:

• Before you disclose. File before you show the invention publicly. A public disclosure before filing generally destroys novelty. Only some countries give a grace period, of about 6 to 12 months, so a grace period you heard about in one country does not protect you in the others 2.
• Twelve months from your first filing. Under the Paris Convention you have 12 months from your first application to file abroad, directly or through the PCT, and keep that first filing date. With a PCT application, you then usually enter the national phase in each country you choose 30 months from that earliest date 3.

See a registered patent attorney or agent before you disclose the invention publicly and well before the 12-month mark: a disclosure can cost you novelty, and a missed deadline costs you your earlier filing date abroad.

Trademarks are registered country by country

A U.S. federal registration covers the United States and its territories. There is no worldwide trademark 4. To protect a brand in other markets:

1. Start from a home application or registration. The Madrid System requires one at a member's IP office, plus nationality, domicile or a business in a member country 6. A U.S. registration can serve as the basis for filing abroad 4.
2. Check the cost with WIPO's Madrid fee calculator. Fees depend on the countries and classes you choose 67.
3. File one international application through the Madrid System and choose your countries 46. If your home filing is a U.S. application or registration, file through WIPO's Madrid e-Filing; since October 1, 2026 it is the single place to file one 8.
4. Expect each country's office to decide on its own. An international registration does not guarantee registration in every country you choose 4.

Once you hold a U.S. registration, record it with U.S. Customs and Border Protection so it can stop imports of goods bearing an infringing mark 4.

Choose the countries that matter to the next decision

Start with the places where something will actually happen. In the illustration example, ask:

• Where will the client sell the packaging?
• Who is granting permission, and does the agreement name the uses and the territory?
• If a dispute comes up, where did the copying or selling happen, and where are the parties?

A manufacturer, a platform, a licensee and a customer can each be in a different country. A website that can be viewed everywhere does not tell you which country's law answers each question.

For each country on your list, find its IP office in WIPO's Directory of Intellectual Property Offices and check the local deadline, fee and filing requirement there 9.

A useful way to talk with an AI

Ask the assistant to name the country behind each rule it gives you: "Is that a U.S. rule, a treaty principle, or a rule in the country where I plan to sell?" Do not accept a confident worldwide answer.

Then ask it what this article leaves out, and take that question to the official IP office of the country where your decision happens.