The European Union Intellectual Property Office launched the ‘Ideas Powered for Business SME FUND’. It is a 20 million Euro grant scheme created to help European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access their intellectual property rights.

Supported by the European Commission and the EUIPO, the objective of this action is to financially support EU SMEs that either wish to receive an IP pre-diagnostic service (‘IP scan’) through the European IP offices offering such a service or to directly protect their trademarks and designs, through the national, regional and/or EU IP systems.

The SME Fund will co-finance two types of services:

➢ service 1: IP pre-diagnostic service (‘IP scan’)

➢ service 2: trademarks and designs basic application fees.

The applicant will benefit from a refund of 75% of the costs related to the pre-diagnosis of IP and 50% on the basic fees for trademark and design applications at national, regional (Benelux) and EU.

Each SME can be reimbursed up to a maximum of EUR 1 500.

Eligibility & Budget

The SME Fund is aimed directly at small and medium-sized enterprises based in the 27 EU Member States, that fit the official EU definition of a SME as defined in the EU recommendation 2003/361.

The call for proposals will be open as in the timetable below:

• 1 March 2021 – 31 March 2021
• 1 May 2021 – 31 May 2021
• 1 July 2021 – 31 July 2021
• 1 Sept. 2021 – 30 Sept. 2021

Applications made outside each designated time periods will not be considered. Only one application can be made for service 1 or service 2 or a combination of both, always with a maximum reimbursement of EUR 1 500 per applicant.

The total budget available for the co-financing of actions under this call for proposals is estimated at EUR 20 000 000. An indicative budget per window is allocated and it corresponds to 4.000.000 EUR. If all the funds are not used for a specific window, these may be carried over to later windows.

Submissions

More information and official documentation are available here