New grants are available for European small and medium sized enterprises (SME) that want to register their trademarks, designs and patents.
The Euipo SME Fund «Ideas Powered for business» is an initiative supported by the European Commission and implemented by the European Union Intellectual Property Office that allows SMEs established in Europe to ask for a financial support for activities related to the protection of their IP rights.
After the great success of the previous edition of the Euipo SME Fund, which helped around 13.000 European SMEs, the 2022 edition opened on January 10th with interesting updates.
Euipo SME Fund 2022: how it works
This year it will be possibile to apply for two types of vouchers:
- Voucher for partial reimbursement of IP scan activities (only available in some Member States), of trademark and designs application fee at national, European and international level. The voucher can reimburse up to 75% of the fees of national and European applications and up to 50% of the international application fees. The maximum amount of this type of voucher is 1.500,00 Euro.
- Voucher for partial reimbursement of patents fee at national level. Big update of this edition, the Fund now offers voucher for reimbursement of 50% of the fees paid for the national patent application. The maximum value of this voucher is of 750,00 Euro.
A SME can submit only one application per voucher with a maximum value of 2.500 Euro.
The application can be submitted online until December 16th 2022 – or until the budget available is exhausted – by creating an account and filing the online form.
Once the SME receives the grant positive decision, it will be possibile to proceed with the filing of the application. After paying for the service, the SME can request the payment of the voucher through its account.
For more information, please visit: https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/it/online-services/sme-fund.