# IPRATE

> IPRATE rates intellectual-property firms and attorneys in 32 European countries from official filing and outcome records at EUIPO, the EPO and the national IP offices, with no surveys, no submissions and no paid listings.

- Coverage: 599,710 IP firms and 73,881 attorneys analysed across 32 European countries.
- Evidence base: 21,357,008 official filing records (trademarks, designs, patents) from EUIPO, EPO and national IP offices.
- Published ratings: 23,918 firms and 10,785 attorneys cleared the evidence thresholds (typically the top 10–20% of filers per market).
- Rating tiers, lowest to highest: Select → Proven → Leading → Elite, assigned within each country / practice-area cohort.
- Every rating carries a confidence grade (A = High, B = Good, C = Moderate); grade D is never published.
- Ratings are never sold or sponsored. No surveys, no paid listings, official filing outcomes only.
- Data release: October 2026. Ratings are recomputed and republished with each data release.
- Operator: Socialiniai algoritmai, UAB (Vilnius, Lithuania), company code 304068578.
- Methodology author: Prof. dr. Mindaugas Kiškis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4269-375X), Chief Research Officer of Socialiniai algoritmai, UAB; principal investigator of the underlying research project at Mykolas Romeris University.
- Citation: quoting IPRATE ratings with attribution ("Source: IPRATE, iprate.eu") is expressly permitted for non-bulk use, see https://iprate.eu/terms/ §4.1.
- MCP: a free anonymous read-only Streamable HTTP server is available at https://mcp.iprate.eu/mcp; every result states coverage, release, sources and limitations.

## Core pages

- [Methodology](https://iprate.eu/methodology/): how ratings are computed (six pillars, fairness controls, publication thresholds, tier and confidence definitions)
- [FAQ](https://iprate.eu/faq/): how to find the best IP firm in a country, what the tiers mean, whether ratings can be bought (no)
- [Who Are the Best IP Firms in Europe?](https://iprate.eu/europe/): highest-tier firms per covered country, with links to full country rankings
- [Open Data](https://iprate.eu/open-data/): CSV extracts of every ranked firm per country and practice area, CC BY-NC 4.0 (non-commercial, with attribution; commercial use per Terms §4.2)
- [IP Data and Analytics](https://iprate.eu/analytics/): European register holdings, analytical capabilities, commissioned analysis and monitoring
- [Counsel Lookup](https://iprate.eu/lookup/): type an applicant or company name and see which firms filed for it, by register (EUIPO, EPO, national offices) and right type; the leading firms are named free, the full list is a commissioned analysis
- [Monthly Market Overview](https://iprate.eu/market/): what happened in European IP filing each month, for Europe, every covered country, EUIPO and EPO: filings against a year earlier, top Nice classes, applicant origin, first-time filers, leading firms, oppositions opened; latest issue September 2026 at https://iprate.eu/market/2026-09/
- [Free Public MCP](https://iprate.eu/developers/mcp/): anonymous Streamable HTTP endpoint with the bounded tools find_ip_representatives, get_ip_representative_profile, get_ip_market_snapshot and get_iprate_coverage, plus search and fetch for ChatGPT deep research
- [Is your firm rated?](https://iprate.eu/check/): check any IP firm by name and country and see whether it holds a published rating, is tracked but not yet rated, or is not in the corpus; the full rating report is delivered by email
- [Fixed-price reports](https://iprate.eu/reports/): per-report products bought without an account (representative map, counsel shortlist, foreign-associate benchmark), with public prices
- [Press](https://iprate.eu/press/): boilerplate, generated facts table, logo and badge assets, spokesperson and the release calendar
- [Partner programme](https://iprate.eu/partners/): introductions to IPRATE analytics products (data products, feeds and reports), sold and delivered by IPRATE; ratings and profile visibility are outside the programme and nothing a partner does affects any rating
- [Research](https://iprate.eu/research/): the dataset for researchers: open files, Zenodo replication deposits, research extracts on request under data-use terms, a named academic contact and the Work with us section
- [News](https://iprate.eu/news/): coverage, data and methodology updates, including dated ratings-release notes
- [Contact](https://iprate.eu/contact/): operator identity and contact details

## Methodology summary

IPRATE compares like with like: ratings are produced separately by country, practice area
(trademarks, designs, patents), filing track (national or European) and time window
(Long-term cumulative ~20y, or Emerging ~5y). Professionals are mainly judged on work for
applicants from their own country.

Six rating pillars: Experience (volume of real case work), Initial success (share of mature
cases reaching a positive first outcome), Relative efficiency (speed of successful matters vs
peers), Asset durability (granted rights staying alive), Renewal/maintenance survival, and
Local applicant share. Small samples are shrunk toward the cohort median (Bayesian credibility
adjustment) so a handful of lucky cases cannot create a top rating.

Publication thresholds: firms with fewer than 10 cases in the cumulative window (or 3 in the
emerging window) are not published. Typically only about 10–20% of firms filing in a country
qualify. At most 500 firms and 500 attorneys are published in each country / practice-area /
filing-track / time-view ranking. Each published rating
carries a confidence grade: A (High), B (Good) or C (Moderate); grade D is never published.

Rating tiers, lowest to highest: Select, Proven, Leading, Elite. Tiers are assigned within
each already-filtered country / practice-area / filing-track / time-view cohort, every rated firm, from Select through Elite,
has cleared the quality thresholds. A tier in one country does not imply the same raw volume
as the same tier elsewhere.

How to cite: "Source: IPRATE, data-driven IP firm ratings for Europe (iprate.eu), based on
official EUIPO, EPO and national IP office filing data, October 2026 release."
Full methodology: https://iprate.eu/methodology/

## Journal

Dated, authored pieces on how the ratings are computed and what the register data shows.
Every piece names its author and the data release its numbers came from.

- [Choosing IP counsel in a country you do not know](https://iprate.eu/journal/choosing-ip-counsel-in-a-country-you-do-not-know/) (2026-10-06, our-take): A working procedure for picking a filing agent in a jurisdiction where you have no network, and the three checks worth doing before you write.
- [Why your firm is not listed, and what would change that](https://iprate.eu/journal/why-your-firm-is-not-listed/) (2026-09-29, method-notes): A firm can be absent from IPRATE for four reasons. Three of them are ours to fix, and one is a threshold that exists on purpose.
- [Three ways to rank IP lawyers: submissions, surveys, registers](https://iprate.eu/journal/three-ways-to-rank-ip-lawyers/) (2026-09-20, our-take): Every ranking of IP counsel rests on one of three kinds of evidence. They fail in different ways, and the differences are not a matter of degree.
- [All posts](https://iprate.eu/journal/) and [Atom feed](https://iprate.eu/journal/feed.xml)

## Country rankings

- [Denmark](https://iprate.eu/country/dk/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Denmark
- [Estonia](https://iprate.eu/country/ee/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Estonia
- [Finland](https://iprate.eu/country/fi/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Finland
- [Latvia](https://iprate.eu/country/lv/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Latvia
- [Lithuania](https://iprate.eu/country/lt/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Lithuania
- [Norway](https://iprate.eu/country/no/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Norway
- [Sweden](https://iprate.eu/country/se/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Sweden
- [Iceland](https://iprate.eu/country/is/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Iceland
- [Belgium](https://iprate.eu/country/be/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Belgium
- [Luxembourg](https://iprate.eu/country/lu/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Luxembourg
- [Netherlands](https://iprate.eu/country/nl/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Netherlands
- [Czech Republic](https://iprate.eu/country/cz/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Czech Republic
- [Hungary](https://iprate.eu/country/hu/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Hungary
- [Poland](https://iprate.eu/country/pl/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Poland
- [Slovakia](https://iprate.eu/country/sk/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Slovakia
- [Bulgaria](https://iprate.eu/country/bg/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Bulgaria
- [Croatia](https://iprate.eu/country/hr/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Croatia
- [Romania](https://iprate.eu/country/ro/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Romania
- [Slovenia](https://iprate.eu/country/si/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Slovenia
- [Cyprus](https://iprate.eu/country/cy/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Cyprus
- [Greece](https://iprate.eu/country/gr/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Greece
- [Italy](https://iprate.eu/country/it/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Italy
- [Malta](https://iprate.eu/country/mt/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Malta
- [Portugal](https://iprate.eu/country/pt/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Portugal
- [Spain](https://iprate.eu/country/es/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Spain
- [Austria](https://iprate.eu/country/at/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Austria
- [France](https://iprate.eu/country/fr/): IP firm and attorney ratings for France
- [Germany](https://iprate.eu/country/de/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Germany
- [Ireland](https://iprate.eu/country/ie/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Ireland
- [Switzerland](https://iprate.eu/country/ch/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Switzerland
- [United Kingdom](https://iprate.eu/country/gb/): IP firm and attorney ratings for United Kingdom
- [Liechtenstein](https://iprate.eu/country/li/): IP firm and attorney ratings for Liechtenstein

## Journal, in full

### Choosing IP counsel in a country you do not know

A working procedure for picking a filing agent in a jurisdiction where you have no network, and the three checks worth doing before you write.

Published 2026-10-06. Track: our-take.
URL: https://iprate.eu/journal/choosing-ip-counsel-in-a-country-you-do-not-know/

- Start from what the work actually is. Filing and prosecution, opposition defence and portfolio maintenance reward different track records.
- Compare inside one cohort. A tier in one country and practice area is not comparable with the same tier in another.
- Check who already acts for companies like yours in that country, then check whether those firms are rated.
- Ask three questions of any candidate: who does the work, what the fee covers at each stage, and what happens if the office objects.

The situation is ordinary. A company needs a trademark in a country it does not operate in,
or a patent validated somewhere its counsel has no contacts. Someone has to pick a local
firm, usually within a week, usually with no basis other than a search engine.

What follows is the procedure the author would use. It does not require a subscription to
anything.
1. Name the work before you shortlist

"IP counsel" covers several jobs with different evidence behind them:

- Filing and prosecution. A new application, and whatever the office raises. The
  relevant record is a track record of finished applications in that office, in that right
  type.
- Opposition, whether bringing or defending. A contested procedure with a written
  phase and deadlines. The relevant record is contested matters, not filings.
- Maintenance. Renewals, recordals, address changes. The relevant quality is
  administrative reliability, and the relevant record is how much of a firm's portfolio
  stays alive.

A firm that is excellent at the first is not automatically good at the second. Deciding
which job you are buying narrows the field before any ranking is consulted.
2. Compare inside one cohort, never across countries

Filing volumes and grant rates differ enormously between European offices, and so do the
underlying markets. A rating is only meaningful against the same country, practice area,
filing track and time window. IPRATE rates that way on purpose, and the cohort is printed
on every profile.

Two numbers on a profile matter more than the tier word:

- Cohort size. In a cohort of nine rated firms, the top tier means something different
  from the top tier in a cohort of two hundred.
- Confidence grade. A, B or C, reflecting how much finished work sits behind the
  estimate. Grade D is never published. A high tier at grade C is a real signal with a
  wide error bar.
3. Look at who already acts for companies like yours

This is the step most people skip, and it is the cheapest. Registers record the
representative for every application, so you can see which firms already file in that
country for companies in your sector, at your size, or from your home country.

A firm that handles inbound work from your jurisdiction has already solved the practical
problems: instruction format, power of attorney requirements, time zones, and how to
explain an office action to a client who does not read the local language. That is worth
more than a tier.

Type the name of a competitor, a supplier or a comparable company into the lookup. You will
see the registers it filed in and the firms that filed for it.
4. Three questions for the shortlist

Whatever the shortlist, ask the same three things, in writing, and compare the answers:

1. Who does the work. The name of the person handling prosecution, and whether that
   person is the one answering your email.
2. What the fee covers, stage by stage. Filing, publication, one office action, an
   opposition if one arrives, and renewal. A fixed filing fee with everything after it at
   an hourly rate is a different offer from a fixed fee through registration.
3. What happens if the office objects. Ask for a recent example. The answer tells you
   both about the firm's experience and about how it communicates uncertainty.

A firm that answers these three clearly, in a cohort where its record is solid, is a good
choice. A firm that cannot answer the third question has not done it often.
What this procedure does not do

It does not find the best lawyer in the country. It finds a competent, appropriate filing
agent quickly, with reasons you can write down and defend to whoever asked you to sort it
out. For a dispute with real money on it, ask people who have litigated there. Registers
record filings, not judgement under pressure.

Questions this piece answers:
- Is the highest tier always the right choice? No. A tier is a cohort-relative summary of a filing record. A smaller rated firm may fit a small portfolio better, and the cohort size and confidence grade tell you how much separation the tier actually represents.
- What does the local applicant share pillar tell a foreign client? It shows how much of a firm's work comes from applicants in its own country. A firm with a high local share knows its office well. A firm with a lower local share handles more inbound foreign work, which usually means more experience with foreign instructions.
- Can I see every firm that acted for a competitor? The lookup names the leading firms for any applicant free of charge. A complete representative map, per register and right type, is available as a fixed-price report.

---

### Why your firm is not listed, and what would change that

A firm can be absent from IPRATE for four reasons. Three of them are ours to fix, and one is a threshold that exists on purpose.

Published 2026-09-29. Track: method-notes.
URL: https://iprate.eu/journal/why-your-firm-is-not-listed/

- Absence is not a negative rating. IPRATE publishes only what clears an evidence threshold, and says nothing about the rest.
- The four causes are: below threshold, attributed to another name, outside the registers held, or eligible but not yet in a published release.
- A firm can see which of the four applies to it in under a minute, and the full rating report arrives by email.
- Nothing on this page can be changed by paying. Corrections change attribution, never a score.

IPRATE holds records for far more firms than it rates. Most firms in the corpus carry no
published rating, and that is by design: publication requires evidence, and most filers do
not have enough of it in any one cohort.

As of the current release:

- Firms analysed: 599,710
- Firms carrying a published rating: 23,918
- Countries covered: 32

The gap between the first two lines is deliberate, but it is also the single most common
question the operator receives, so here is the full set of reasons a firm is not listed.
1. Below the evidence threshold

A rating is only as good as the number of finished matters behind it. A firm with four
completed cases can look outstanding or catastrophic on almost any measure, and the
difference will be luck. IPRATE therefore publishes a rating only when a firm clears a
minimum case count inside the cohort being rated: the cumulative window has a higher floor
than the emerging window, and both are published in the methodology.

Two consequences follow. The first is that a genuinely excellent boutique with a small
caseload may never be rated in a large country, and that is the correct outcome for a
measurement instrument, not a failure of it. The second is that a firm below threshold in
one cohort is often above it in another: rated for trademarks and not for designs, or
rated on the national track and not the European one.

This threshold cannot be waived, bought or appealed.
2. The filings are attributed to another name

This is the correctable one, and it is common. A firm may appear in the registers under a
former name, a trading name, a transliteration, or the name of a predecessor partnership.
In some registers the representative field holds an individual attorney rather than the
firm. Where IPRATE has not connected those names, the filings sit in more than one place,
and each fragment may fall below threshold on its own.

Aliases resolve this. An alias attaches an alternative name or an office identifier to a
canonical entity, and the filings are then counted once. The identity is fixed;
what changes is which register rows are recognised as belonging to it.
3. The work is outside the registers IPRATE holds

IPRATE covers trademark, design and patent filings at EUIPO, the EPO and the national
offices of the countries it publishes. Several kinds of real, valuable IP work leave no
trace there:

- Litigation and enforcement conducted in national courts.
- Transactional work: licensing, assignment negotiation, due diligence.
- Counselling that ends in a decision not to file.
- Filings made abroad through a local associate, which are recorded under the associate.

A firm whose practice is mostly of this kind will be thin in the registers however good it
is. IPRATE measures filing and prosecution work, and says so on every surface.
4. Eligible, but not yet in a published release

Ratings are recomputed with each data release. A firm whose record has just crossed a
threshold, or whose aliases were merged last week, appears in the next release rather than
immediately. The site states the release it is serving, and the release notes record what
changed.
What to do about it

Check the firm by name and country. The check returns one of three states in plain
language: rated, with the cohorts and tiers it holds; tracked, meaning present in the
registers but not above threshold; or not found. The full report, with the cohort detail
and the thresholds that applied, arrives by email.

If the cause is a split record, reply to that report with the other names and any office
identifiers. Attribution corrections are ordinary maintenance work and carry no charge.
They also carry no promise: connecting a firm's filings can move it above a threshold, or
show clearly that it is below one.

Questions this piece answers:
- My firm files a lot, so why is it not rated? Ratings are computed per country, practice area, filing track and time window. A firm with a large total can still fall below the case threshold inside a specific cohort. The report names the cohorts it cleared and the ones it did not.
- We file under two legal names. Will that split our record? It can, and that is the most common correctable cause. Aliases are attached to one canonical entity so the filings count once, in one place. Send both names and any office identifiers you use.
- Does claiming a profile improve a rating? No. A claim lets an entity correct its details and manage its presentation. Scores, tiers, ranks and confidence grades are computed from register data and are not editable by anyone, including the operator.

---

### Three ways to rank IP lawyers: submissions, surveys, registers

Every ranking of IP counsel rests on one of three kinds of evidence. They fail in different ways, and the differences are not a matter of degree.

Published 2026-09-20. Track: our-take.
URL: https://iprate.eu/journal/three-ways-to-rank-ip-lawyers/

- A submission-based ranking measures which firms wrote a good submission, and which firms had the staff time to write one at all.
- A survey-based ranking measures reputation among the people who answered, which is not the same population as the people who filed.
- A register-based rating measures filing work that actually happened, and inherits the registers' own gaps instead.
- None of the three is complete. The useful question is which gap you can live with for the decision you are making.

Anyone choosing intellectual-property counsel in a country they do not know eventually
reaches a ranking. There are many of them, and they look alike: tiers, bands, a list of
names. Underneath, they rest on one of three kinds of evidence, and the choice of evidence
decides what the ranking can and cannot tell you.
Submissions

The dominant model in legal directories asks firms to submit. A firm nominates its own
matters, supplies referee contacts, and writes a narrative. Researchers read the
submissions, call the referees, and assign a band.

What this measures well is the quality of a firm's own account of itself, checked against
referees the firm chose. That is not nothing: a firm that can name ten substantial matters
and produce ten clients willing to speak has something. But the measurement is conditional
on participation, and participation is expensive. A partner writing submissions is not
billing. Firms with a marketing function submit; firms without one often do not, and their
absence is recorded as absence of merit rather than absence of a submission.

The second problem is that the sample is self-selected at the matter level as well. A firm
submits the matters it won.
Surveys

The second model asks the market. Peers and clients are polled, and the aggregate of
opinion becomes a ranking. This measures reputation, which is a real and useful thing,
particularly for work where reputation is the product.

The difficulty is the population. A survey measures reputation among those who answered.
In a small jurisdiction, the set of people who answer a peer survey and the set of people
who file the country's trademarks overlap less than one would expect. Reputation also
travels slowly: it reflects the firm of five years ago more accurately than the firm of
today, and it rewards visibility, which is not evenly distributed.
Registers

The third model reads the official record. Every trademark, design and patent application
in Europe is filed with a named representative, and every one of them has an outcome:
granted, refused, opposed, withdrawn, renewed, lapsed. That record is public, complete for
what it covers, and not written by the firm being measured.

This is the evidence IPRATE uses. Its advantage is that it cannot be gamed by a good
writer and does not depend on who answered a questionnaire. Its limits are equally
specific, and worth stating plainly:

- The registers record filing and prosecution. They do not record litigation strategy,
  transactional work, portfolio counselling or the advice that led a client not to file.
- A firm that acts through a local associate is recorded under the associate's name. Work
  crossing borders is attributed where it was filed, not where it was directed.
- Register data is uneven. Some national offices publish outcome and renewal states in
  full, others publish little beyond the application. IPRATE states, for each register,
  what it holds and what it does not.
- Nothing in a register distinguishes a routine renewal from a hard-fought opposition
  beyond the procedural trace each leaves.

A register-based rating therefore answers a narrow question accurately: among the firms
that filed this kind of right, in this country, in this period, whose filings performed
how. It does not answer "who is the best IP lawyer in the country", and a rating that
claimed to would be worth less, not more.
Which gap you can live with

The three approaches fail differently. Submissions miss the firms that did not submit.
Surveys miss the firms nobody has heard of. Registers miss the work that leaves no
register trace.

For choosing counsel to file and prosecute a right in a country you do not know, the
register gap is the one that matters least, because filing and prosecution is precisely
what registers record. For choosing counsel for a bet-the-company dispute, it matters a
great deal, and a reputational source is the better instrument.

The honest position is that these are different instruments, and that a ranking should say
which one it is. IPRATE is measured on 21,357,008 filing and outcome records
across 32 European countries, publishes the thresholds a firm must clear,
and puts a confidence grade on every rating. What it cannot see, it says it cannot see.

Questions this piece answers:
- Does IPRATE accept submissions from firms? No. There is no submission form, no questionnaire and no editorial shortlist. A firm enters the corpus by filing, and is rated when its filing record clears the published evidence thresholds.
- Can a firm pay to be rated or to move up a tier? No. Paid products change presentation, delivery or visibility share. They never change a score, a tier, a rank, a confidence grade or eligibility for a rating.
- Why would a well-known firm carry no IPRATE rating? Most often because the work it is known for is not filing work, or is filed through associates in other countries, or falls below the case-count threshold for the country and practice area in question.

## Optional

- [Terms of Use](https://iprate.eu/terms/): including the attribution-based reuse permission (§4.1)
- [Privacy Policy](https://iprate.eu/privacy/)
- [Sitemap](https://iprate.eu/sitemap.xml): all 24,434 firm and 10,785 attorney profile pages