# 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: 599,344 IP firms and 68,412 attorneys analysed across 32 European countries. - Evidence base: 21,467,467 official filing records (trademarks, designs, patents) from EUIPO, EPO and national IP offices. - Published ratings: 23,389 firms and 11,988 attorneys cleared the evidence thresholds (typically the top 10–20% of filers per market). - Two public ratings in each country / practice-area cohort. The top quarter is Top Rated. All other rated firms are Rated. - Two labels can appear next to a rating. Fast Growing shows that a firm is one of the fastest-growing rated firms in its country and practice area. Specialist shows that a firm is in the top quarter for filings in one class. - 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 - [Similar mark check](https://iprate.eu/check/mark/): similar text in EUIPO and Benelux mark records, with class overlap and published counsel profiles - [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 - [How results are ordered](https://iprate.eu/how-results-are-ordered/): how IPRATE chooses and orders firms in ratings, firm lists and requests for quotes, and what a paid plan changes (visibility share, never a rating) - [Ask for quotes](https://iprate.eu/quotes/new/): describe a trade mark matter and receive quotes from up to three firms with published ratings in each chosen place, free for the client - [Opposed trade marks](https://iprate.eu/cases/): recent oppositions against companies with no representative on record, each with a link to quotes from rated firms - [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. Two public ratings are given within each already-filtered country / practice-area / filing-track / time-view cohort. The top quarter is Top Rated. All other rated firms are Rated. Every rated firm has passed the quality thresholds. A rating is always read inside its own cohort, so a Top Rated firm in a small market may file far less than one in a large market. Two labels can appear next to a rating. A label describes a rated firm and leaves the rating unchanged. Fast Growing shows that a firm is one of the fastest-growing rated firms in its country and practice area. Its filings rose, and rose faster than its market. Specialist shows that a firm is in the top quarter for filings in one class, where that class is a real part of its work. Nice classes 9, 35, 41 and 42 are left out, because they appear in a large share of all trademark filings. 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. - [What the six pillars measure, and what they do not](https://iprate.eu/journal/what-the-six-pillars-measure/) (2026-10-13, method-notes): Each pillar answers one narrow question about a filing record. Read together they describe a practice; read singly they are easy to misread. - [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 ### What the six pillars measure, and what they do not Each pillar answers one narrow question about a filing record. Read together they describe a practice; read singly they are easy to misread. Published 2026-10-13. Track: method-notes. URL: https://iprate.eu/journal/what-the-six-pillars-measure/ - Six pillars: experience, initial success, relative efficiency, asset durability, renewal survival and local applicant share. - Every pillar is computed inside one cohort, so the comparison is always like with like. - Small samples are shrunk toward the cohort median, which is why a perfect record on few cases does not produce a top rating. - Local applicant share is descriptive, not a quality measure. High and low are both defensible positions. A rating that is one number is hard to argue with and hard to trust. IPRATE publishes six component measures alongside the tier, so that a reader can see which part of a record produced it. This note says what each one is, and what it is not. All six are computed inside a single cohort: one country, one practice area, one filing track, one time window. Nothing below compares a firm in one country with a firm in another. Experience The volume of real, finished case work in the cohort. Not applications filed, but matters that reached a determinate state, so that a firm cannot raise this measure by filing applications it never prosecutes. What it is not: a measure of the size of the firm, or of revenue. A three-person practice that files steadily for twenty years can carry more cohort experience than a large firm whose IP work is occasional. Initial success Of the matters mature enough to have a first outcome, the share reaching a positive one. For trademarks that is registration without a fatal refusal; for patents, a positive first substantive step. What it is not: a promise. Different practices attract different difficulty. A firm that takes the marginal applications other firms decline will show a lower initial success rate while doing better work on each one. This is the pillar most in need of the others as context. Relative efficiency How long successful matters take, against the cohort, controlling for the kind of matter. Time to a positive outcome is partly the office's and partly the representative's, and the comparison inside a cohort removes most of the office's contribution. What it is not: a measure of responsiveness to the client. It measures procedural progress, not how quickly anyone answers an email. Asset durability Whether granted rights stay granted. Cancellations, successful invalidations and early lapses reduce it. What it is not: attributable entirely to the representative. An owner who stops paying, or abandons a brand, lapses a right for reasons no representative controls. Over enough matters this noise averages out, which is why the pillar is only published above a case threshold. Renewal and maintenance survival Whether rights under a firm's care are renewed on time and kept alive. This is the one pillar that measures administrative reliability rather than legal skill, and it is the one clients notice only when it fails. What it is not: a client-loyalty measure. Portfolios move between firms, and a transfer out is not a failure. Local applicant share The share of a firm's cohort work done for applicants from the firm's own country. This pillar is descriptive. It is displayed because it answers a real question for a foreign client, and it is deliberately not scored as better or worse. A firm with a high local share is embedded in its domestic market; a firm with a lower share sees more inbound instructions from abroad. Both are legitimate practices. Why small samples are pulled toward the middle Every pillar estimate is adjusted toward the cohort median in proportion to how little evidence supports it. A firm with several hundred finished matters keeps almost its raw value. A firm with a dozen is moved substantially toward the middle. This is the single design decision that most shapes the published result. Without it, the top of every ranking would be occupied by firms with four cases and a lucky run, which is what a ranking looks like when it optimises for surprising results rather than for being right. With it, a top tier means a firm performed well and did so often enough for the performance to be measurable. Reading the six together A firm high on experience and durability but middling on initial success is probably taking harder work. A firm high on initial success and efficiency with modest experience is probably filing clean, straightforward applications well. A firm high on renewal survival and low elsewhere is probably a maintenance practice. None of these is a verdict. They are descriptions of a filing record, and the tier is a summary of them within one cohort, carrying a confidence grade that says how much separation the underlying evidence supports. Questions this piece answers: - Is a higher local applicant share better? No. It is a description of where a firm's work comes from. A high share indicates a domestic practice close to its own office; a lower share indicates more inbound foreign work. Which one suits a client depends on the client. - Why does a firm with a perfect grant rate not reach the top tier? Because the estimate is shrunk toward the cohort median in proportion to how little evidence supports it. A perfect record over a handful of cases carries little information, and the method says so rather than rewarding it. - Do the pillars have fixed weights? The weighting is part of the published methodology and is owner-controlled, not tuned per country or per firm. It is versioned, and every rating states the methodology version it was computed under. --- ### 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: 599,344 - Firms carrying a published rating: 23,389 - 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 21,467,467 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. ## Claiming a profile and starting a trial Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/claiming-a-profile/ Find your firm on IPRATE. Sign in and send us a claim. We check your evidence before we give you access. When we approve a firm claim, a fourteen-day Pro profile trial starts. When we approve a claim by a solo attorney, you also get access to the attorney's solo firm. Each firm can have one trial. Firms that already have Pro, Premium or the founding offer keep their plan. This includes plans that start later. These firms get no trial. During the trial, you can add a description, a logo, contact links and a profile button. The trial includes five watches. To add more watches, write to us through the contact page. Your dashboard shows the days left in your trial. To keep Pro, ask for a proforma invoice. After the trial, your profile moves to Free. We keep your saved Pro details. Your dashboard also shows the status of your claim. If we need more evidence, we will ask you by email. Reply to that email with the evidence. ## Connecting an assistant to IPRATE Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/connecting-an-assistant/ You can connect the free IPRATE MCP server to Claude Code, Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or the OpenAI Responses API. Open the assistant setup page and follow the section for your assistant. Each section shows the date we last checked its instructions. Once your assistant connects, ask about IPRATE coverage, a published firm profile or a market snapshot. Each answer names the IPRATE release it uses. The free server reads public IPRATE data. You can order paid data products in your IPRATE account. If the connection fails, check that the address ends in /mcp. Check also that your assistant allows a custom remote server. In a managed workspace, ask your administrator to check the connector settings. ## Using counsel lookup Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/counsel-lookup/ An applicant is the company or person named on a filing. Enter the applicant's name and choose the matching applicant from the list. One applicant can appear under several spellings. Use the register details to pick the one you mean. The result shows filing counts and a short list of representatives. It also shows the free limit and how many more representatives we found. A link to a published profile leads to the firm's rating. Each rating belongs to one country, practice area and filing track. The full representative map is one of our reports. Check its applicant before you order. If an applicant is missing, try its legal name or an earlier name. If the search still misses the applicant, send us a register number through the contact page. ## Reading coverage and dates Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/coverage-and-dates/ The coverage table shows what we hold for each register and type of right. We list a product as covered only when every required source and field is present. Every report and delivery has a Data as of section. It gives the filing dates of the records we hold. It shows the date we last loaded records from each register. It also shows the date we last checked each register. Opposition records have their own start and end dates. Read them together with the register's scope. Counts describe the records we hold for one register and release. Compare counts within the same scope. Planning your own analysis? Send us the offices, fields and period you need through the contact page. We will check our coverage against your question. ## Starting with the Data API Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/data-api-start/ Choose the Data API in your IPRATE account. Once we activate your access, create an API key. Keep it private. Send the key in the X-API-Key header. Start with the public coverage endpoint. It shows the offices and fields you can query. Find the company with /entities/resolve. Use the entity ID it returns in your portfolio request. Each response states the coverage we applied. Follow the returned cursor to read the next pages. The pages belong to a saved result with a set lifetime. Repeat a request with the same request ID during that time, and you get the saved response again. The Data API page explains access and use through an assistant. If a request fails, send us its request ID and error code through the contact page. Never include your API key. ## Resolving delivery and record questions Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/delivery-and-records/ If a digest has not arrived, check the delivery address and your spam folder. We send a digest when a change matches an active watch. To check your watch, send us the office you expected and your delivery address. To correct a firm name, send us the IPRATE profile link, the name you prefer and a register record that shows it. Please keep professional titles and qualifications in the name. If a mark is missing, send us the office and the application number. Each register and type of right has its own coverage. The coverage table shows what we hold. For a question about a report or a payment, send us the order reference or the proforma invoice number. Send all of these through the contact page. Never send us API keys or passwords. ## What the opposition changes file contains Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/opposition-changes/ An opposition changes file lists the opposition records for the offices and period you ordered. Each record in the CSV has the application number and the source fields we hold for that office. The delivery email and the attached asof.txt file give the register scope and dates. The opposition dates show the period this file covers. An opposition record shows that someone has opposed a mark. Follow the register link to see the current file and any later decision. Your order sets the offices and the period. We are happy to discuss extra fields before a custom delivery. If a record is unclear, send us its application number and your order reference through the contact page. Keep the original CSV so we can check its source fields. ## Ordering a report Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/ordering-a-report/ Choose a representative map, a counsel shortlist or a reciprocity report. Check the subject before you send the order. A representative map follows one applicant. A counsel shortlist covers one country and practice area. A reciprocity report covers a pair of countries. We send a proforma invoice for each paid order. Add the payment reference to your bank transfer. We prepare the report once your payment arrives. The delivery email has a link to the report and a separate link to the CSV pack. The pack holds the report rows and an asof.csv file. The Data as of section shows the registers the report uses. If a link has expired or the subject needs a change, send us your order reference through the contact page. ## How the own-firm watch works Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/own-firm-watch/ Once we approve your firm claim, we can set up your own-firm watch. It follows the representative names linked to your firm. We group the spellings of your firm's name into this one watch. Every own-firm watch covers EUIPO. For firms in Germany, the United Kingdom and Benelux, it also covers the national office where we hold that office's records. Firms in other countries get the EUIPO watch. The German records are registered marks. The United Kingdom records are opposition records. The EUIPO and Benelux records are pending and registered marks. The Data as of section gives the scope and dates of each delivery. Free includes the own-firm watch. Pro includes five watches. Premium includes twenty-five watches. To add more watches, write to us through the contact page. We review your first deliveries before we send them. Send us your profile link through the contact page. We will confirm the watch names and the delivery address with you. ## What Pro and Premium change Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/pro-and-premium/ With Free, the approved owner can use the firm dashboard and correct facts on the profile. Pro adds a longer description, a website link, a logo, an attorney photo, contact links, a profile button and your verified trading name. Pro includes five watches. Premium includes every Pro feature. It adds country visibility in the countries you choose. Premium includes twenty-five watches. Country visibility needs a current published rating in that country. The plans page shows the current offer and the proforma invoice terms. Your paid term starts once your bank transfer matches the proforma invoice. If a feature is missing, check the firm selected in your dashboard. Check also the end date of its plan. If the plan is active, send us the profile link and the order reference through the contact page. ## Reading an IPRATE rating Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/reading-a-rating/ Each rating belongs to a peer group. A peer group is the firms in one country, practice area, filing track and time window. Compare firms within the same peer group. There are two ratings. Top Rated is the top quarter of a peer group. Every other rated firm is Rated. The confidence grade shows how strong the evidence behind a rating is. We publish grades A, B and C. Each rating draws on six pillars. Each pillar measures one part of a firm's filing record. Read the rating together with its pillars. Volume and success, for example, measure different things. The methodology explains the pillars and how we publish ratings. A profile's date shows the release its rating comes from. If a rating seems to be missing, open the firm's profile and check the country and filing track. You can ask for a correction through the contact page. Send us the profile link and the register record. ## Reading the weekly digest Updated 2026-10-11. URL: https://iprate.eu/help/reading-the-digest/ The digest groups the changes that match your watches. Each group names the kind of change and the number of records shown. Open the attached CSV to see every record in that email. The matched watch shows why we included a record. The register link opens the source record. New applications, oppositions, owner changes and status changes are separate kinds of change. Corrections and added details can also appear. An opposition record shows that someone has opposed the mark. Follow the register link to see the outcome. Read the Data as of section before you compare periods. The last loaded date and the last checked date mark different moments. If a change looks unexpected, send us the office, the application number and the date of the email through the contact page. These details let us check the same record. ## 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 23,824 firm and 11,988 attorney profile pages