Subsidies up to 90% of fees, with grants up to €2,250
With even more incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises, with grants reaching 90% of intellectual property fees, up to €2.250, the European Union's financial support programme for the protection of trademarks and other intellectual property rights, including industrial designs and patents, is being reintroduced in 2022.
In particular, the Department of Company and Intellectual Property Registrar, Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry (MoETI), announces that the "Ideas Powered for Business" SME Fund programme, first run last year by the EU Intellectual Property Office, is again available to the public from today, 10/1/2022 to 16/12/2022, providing a more extended funding package.
The OHIM believes that the increased grant rates and the inclusion of new eligible services in the programme will enable even more businesses to move forward with registering their intellectual property rights. In 2021, the amount of €76,587 was paid as a grant to 346 companies for the registration of trademarks and industrial designs in the Cypriot Registers. The total amount of grants paid to small and medium-sized enterprises in the European Union amounted to €6.8 million.
The Ministry urges businesses to take advantage of the scheme and move forward with the protection of their intangible assets from unfair competition and/or illegal appropriation, opening up prospects for strengthening research, business innovation and thus growth.
This year's programme concerns. [*]Subsidy for the application, publication and deferment of publication fees for national and European industrial designs at a rate of 75%. [*]Subsidy of the basic application fee, party identification fee and subsequent party identification fee for trademark registration applications from non-EU countries at a rate of 50%. Excluding determination fees for European Union countries. [*]Subsidy for a pre-diagnostic scan service (IP Scan), at a rate of 90%. The subsidy for IP Scan services from Cyprus will start in April 2022. [*]Subsidy of fees for filing national applications, search report, grant and publication of patents, at a rate of 50%. [/LIST]
The grant will be made in the form of vouchers as follows. This amount includes the IP Scan grant with a maximum grant amount of €900. [*]Voucher No 2: Patent fee grant with a maximum grant amount of €750. [/LIST]
Interested companies are entitled to submit either one or two vouchers. The total grant amount per company applying for both vouchers is €2,250.
The submission of the grant application for each of the two vouchers must necessarily precede the registration of an application for registration of the intellectual property or the performance of the pre-diagnostic testing service. The decision of approval or rejection will be sent by e-mail to the SME within 15 working days of the submission of the grant application. The enterprise will have a period of 4 months, with a 2-month extension option, to activate the grant vouchers by registering the first trademark, industrial design and/or patent registration application or conducting an IP Scan service. After activation of the vouchers, the SME will have time to exhaust the maximum grant amount with additional IP registration applications up to 6 months for Voucher 1 and up to 12 months for Voucher 2. The grant will be paid by bank transfer to the bank account of the SME within 30 days of the final submission.
Grant applications will be submitted via the European Union Intellectual Property Office at the following link https:/euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/el/online-services/sme-fund.
For further information on the "Ideas Powered for Business" SME Fund grant scheme, the public can contact the official of the Department of the Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property, Pantelis Pantelis, at telephone number 22404357 or at e-mail ppandeli@drcor.meci.gov.cy.
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