IP Strategic services ('Chèques Propriété Intellectuelle')

Aware of the strategic importance of Intellectual Property for SMEs, the Walloon Region has launched a financing support dedicated to strategic services related to Intellectual Property.

These subsidies, resulting from a co-financing of the Walloon Region and the European Regional Development Fund, provides an intervention of 75% in the expenses incurred by SMEs in relation with 6 different types of IP strategic services :

• Patentability analysis (searches realized before a patent priority filing)
• Freedom-to-operate analyses (check whether a products or a process is free to be exploited on the market)
• Searches for opposition (specific searches aiming at enforcing the prior art against third party granted patents)
• Prior art analysis (searches within patent and IP literature documents)
• Patent landscaping (in-depth analysis of patent and non-patent references in order to support strategic decisions)
• Technological surveillance implementation (patent watches in line with the company activities)

Each SME may be granted up to 40 IP cheques (facial value of 500€) per period of 12 months, providing a potential max financing of 15.000€ per year.

These subsidies must be requested by an accredited service provides (Gevers), on behalf of the SME, through a dedicated web platform. The grant decision related to any subsidy request is communicated within max 3 days to the SME.

For more information about this financing: click here.