Italy sets dates for €32m SME grants on patents, trademarks and designs

Italy sets dates for €32m SME grants on patents, trademarks and designs

8 October 2026: Italy's Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT) will open applications for three intellectual property grants for micro, small and medium enterprises: Brevetti+ on 25 November 2026, Marchi+ on 3 December and Disegni+ on 17 December. The schemes carry €32 million between them, and the first has a first-come, first-served queue.

Not yet independently verified. Opening times for Marchi+ and Disegni+ and the per-company caps for those two schemes were not found in the sources we read. The press release names Invitalia as manager of Brevetti+, while the Brevetti+ page names a MIMIT division. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

How the €32m is split

The ministry's press release of 8 October says the dates were fixed by directorial decrees on the indication of Minister Adolfo Urso. It splits the money as €20 million for Brevetti+, €10 million for Disegni+ and €2 million for Marchi+. All three are non-repayable grants for specialist services, and the release gives no closing dates for any of them.

Brevetti+ opens at noon on 25 November

Brevetti+ helps companies turn patents into products. The press release says Invitalia manages it for MIMIT, and the scheme page ties it to the call decree of 28 September 2026. The terms are on the scheme page: up to €140,000 per company under the de minimis rules, covering up to 80% of eligible costs, 85% for companies with a gender equality certification, and 100% where the company co-owns a patent or application with a public research body, or holds an exclusive licence on such a patent recorded with the patent office, UIBM.

Applications open at 12:00 on 25 November and close at 18:00 that day. If money remains, they continue on later working days from 10:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, until it runs out. Applications are filed online on the official platform.

Four patent routes that qualify

An applicant must be an SME, newly established ones included, with legal and operational headquarters in Italy, and must meet one of four conditions:

• an Italian invention patent granted after 1 January 2025, or an exclusive licence on one, with maintenance fees up to date;
• an Italian national application filed after 1 January 2024 whose search report is rated "non negativo";
• a European patent validated in Italy after 1 January 2025, or one with unitary effect from that date;
• a European or international application filed after 1 January 2024, with a search report rated "non negativo", that claims priority from an earlier Italian application not already funded under a previous Brevetti+ call.

What Brevetti+ will pay for

Eligible costs, excluding VAT, fall into three groups. The first covers design, engineering and industrialisation, including proof of concept, with eight service types such as feasibility studies, production design, prototype engineering, production testing, product or process certification linked to the patent, and work by universities and public research bodies. The second covers organisation and development: production process organisation, market analysis for new geographic and sector markets, and communication, promotion and distribution strategy. The third covers intellectual property protection, limited to confidentiality agreements and patent licensing agreements.

A project cannot rest on one type of service and must include at least one from the first group. The second and third groups together cannot exceed 20% of the plan.

Marchi+ and Disegni+ follow in December

Marchi+ pays for registering trademarks abroad: design, filing, prior-art searches, legal help and registration fees. Misura A covers EU trademarks through EUIPO and Misura B covers international registration through WIPO. Unioncamere runs it at marchipiu2026.it.

Disegni+ funds outside specialists who bring a design or model into production and to market, including prototypes and moulds, technical consultancy, product or environmental certifications, and business, marketing and communication plans. It is for SMEs based in Italy, and Unioncamere runs it at disegnipiu2026.it.

Our intellectual property management software category lists ten products for tracking patents and trademarks once they are filed.

The Brevetti+ page names Division IX of the ministry, at Via Veneto 33 in Rome, as the responsible office.

Sources

• MIMIT: Brevetti, Disegni e Marchi 2026, fissate le date per presentare le domande, 8 October 2026
• MIMIT: Brevetti+ 2026 scheme page (read 2026-10-10), 10 October 2026