News

The Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property hereby announces that the European Union Intellectual Property Office’s and European Committee’s “Ideas Powered for Business” SME Fund grant scheme, which offers financial support to small and medium sized enterprises through partial reimbursement of fees related to Intellectual Property protection, is available again to the public as of today 10/01/2022 until 16/12/2022.

The grant scheme for 2022 will subsidy the following Intellectual Property services:

• 75% reimbursement of national and European trademarks registration fees
• 75% reimbursement of national and European industrial designs registration, publication and deferment of publication fees
• 50% reimbursement of outside European Union trademarks basic application, designation and subsequent designation fees. European Union countries designation fees are exempted
• 90% reimbursement of pro-diagnostic service (IP Scan). Reimbursement for Cypriot IP Scan service will start in April 2022
• 50% reimbursement of patents filing, examination, grant and publication fees

The scheme’s main features are the following:

• Reimbursement will be granted as vouchers
  
  • Voucher no1 for reimbursement of trademarks and industrial designs fees with maximum reimbursement amount of €1.500. The amount includes IP Scan fees reimbursement with maximum amount for €900
  • Voucher no2 for reimbursement of patent fees with maximum reimbursement of €900
  • Total reimbursement amount €2.250 for every enterprise that applies for both vouchers
• Subsidy application for each of the vouchers must necessarily be submitted prior of the Intellectual Property registration application or the Ip Scan execution
• The grant award decision will be notified through email to the SME within 15 working days of the application
• The SME will have a time period of 4 months, with a 2-month extension, to activate the grant vouchers by filing the first trademark, industrial design and/or patent application or conduct an IP Scan
• After the vouchers are activated, the SME will have the following time period to file additional registration applications and reach the maximum reimbursement amount:
  
  • Voucher no1 – up to 6 months
  • Voucher no2 – up to 12 months
• Grant payment will be transferred to the SME’s bank account within 30 days from the final submission.

Applications for the grant scheme are filed through the European Union Intellectual Property Office at the following link https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/online-services/sme-fund.

All parties interested for additional information regarding the “Ideas Powered for Business” SME Fund grant scheme may contact Mr. Pandelis Pandeli at 22404357 and at the email address ppandeli@drcor.meci.gov.cy.