PatentTrace — a monitor for Bulgarian intellectual property
A local mirror of the Bulgarian Patent Office registers: 238,000+ trademarks, patents and designs, with change tracking and an expiry pipeline.
What it is
Bulgarian trademarks live in public registers designed for looking up one record — not for watching the market. PatentTrace is a local mirror of those registers: 238,775 records — trademarks, patents, designs, utility models and geographical indications — in my own database, where I can ask the questions the register won’t allow.
The protection clock
The most useful lens is time. A trademark is valid for 10 years and renews indefinitely — but if the owner misses the deadline, a 6-month grace period with a +50% fee follows, and then the mark lapses for good. PatentTrace keeps this whole pipeline on one screen: 1,061 marks expiring within 90 days, 119 in the grace period right now.
Change detection
Every sync compares record by record and stores the diffs: renewals, ownership transfers (like a global pharma giant moving its marks between subsidiaries), expirations. A favourite side effect: you learn that Bulgaria has an officially registered trademark called “ФРИКАДЕЛИ ЦЪР ПЪР” (“Meatballs Sizzle”) — and that it recently lapsed.
Why it exists
It started as a practical question: “is this name free for a new project?”. The answer turned out to require a whole system — and the system turned out to be more interesting than the question.