Filenews 10 January 2022
With even more incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises, since the grants reach 90% of the intellectual property fees, reaching 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 also reinstated in 2022.
Specifically, the Department of The Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry (YEEB) announces that the "Ideas Powered for Business" SME Fund program, which was run last year for the first time by the EU Intellectual Property Office, is put back from today, 10/1/2022 until 16/12/2022, at the disposal of the public, providing a more extensive funding package.
The Ministry of Research and Energy estimates that the increased grant rates and the inclusion of new eligible services in the program will give the opportunity to even more businesses to proceed with the protection of 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 Cyprus Registers. The total amount of the grant paid to small and medium-sized enterprises in the European Union reached €6.8 million.
The Ministry urges businesses to take advantage of the plan and proceed with the protection of their intangible assets from unfair competition or even illegal appropriation, opening up prospects of strengthening research, business innovation and, consequently, development.
This year the program concerns:
- Grant of an application fee for national and European trademarks with a percentage of 75%.
- Grant for the application, publication and deferral of publication of national and European industrial projects with a percentage of 75%.
- Grant of a basic application fee, a fee for the identification of parties and a subsequent fee for the identification of parties of trademark registration applications from non-EU countries, at a rate of 50%. Designation fees for countries of the European Union are excluded.
- Grant of pre-diagnostic service (IP Scan), with a percentage of 90%. The grant for IP Scan services from Cyprus will start in April 2022.
- Subsidy for the fees for the filing of national applications, a survey report, the granting and publication of patents, at a rate of 50%.
The grant will be carried out in the form of vouchers as follows:
- Coupon no.1: Subsidy of trademark and industrial design fees with a maximum grant amount of €1,500. This amount includes the IP Scan grant with a maximum grant of €900.
- Coupon no.2: Subsidy of patent fees with a maximum grant amount of €750.
The undertakings concerned have the right to submit either one or two vouchers. The total amount of the grant per company that will apply 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-diagnostics service. The decision to approve or reject will be sent by e-mail to the small and medium-sized enterprise within 15 working days of the submission of the grant application. The enterprise will have a period of 4 months, with the right to an extension of 2 months, to activate the grant vouchers by registering the first application for registration of a trademark, industrial design and/or patent or the conduct of an IP Scan service. After the activation of the coupons, the small and medium-sized enterprise will have time to exhaust the maximum grant amount with additional applications for registration of Intellectual Property up to 6 months for The Coupon 1 and up to 12 months for Coupon 2. The payment of the grant will be made by wire transfer to the bank account of the small and medium-sized enterprise, within 30 days from the final submission.
Grant applications will be submitted through the European Union Intellectual Property Office at the following link https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/el/online-services/sme-fund.
For more information about the "Ideas Powered for Business" SME Fund grant program, the public can contact the officer of the Department of the Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property Pantelis Pantelis, at the telephone number 22404357 or at the e-mail ppandeli@drcor.meci.gov.cy.
