Portfolio Management
French and EU trademarks renew every ten years on payment of a fee — no specimens, no declarations of use, no excusable-nonuse filings. The traps are elsewhere: renewal windows, grace-period surcharges, and renewing in the name of the wrong owner.
A French trademark is valid for ten years from its filing date and is renewable every ten years, indefinitely. An EU trademark works the same way: ten years from the filing date, renewable in ten-year increments.
For a US-managed portfolio, the most important structural difference is what renewal does not require:
Non-use still matters in Europe — but through a different door. A mark unused for five years becomes vulnerable to revocation for non-use if a third party attacks it, and its owner may be required to prove use when opposing. Non-use is a litigation risk, not a renewal formality. So a European renewal decision is a pure portfolio-management judgment: is this registration still worth its fee?
Why keep renewing? Seniority is the currency of European trademark law. Only the holder of an earlier right can attack a mark, so the older your registration, the more of the register it outranks — and long-standing marks may also benefit from acquiescence (forclusion par tolérance), which bars an earlier owner who knowingly tolerated your registered mark for five years from attacking it.
One recurring docketing error is worth flagging: the EUTM renewal date runs from the filing date — not the registration date, the priority date, or any seniority date. Portfolios migrated from US docketing systems keyed to registration dates should be audited for this. International registrations under the Madrid Protocol follow their own WIPO-centralized renewal cycle and are handled separately.
To be valid, a renewal must be made in the name of the current owner of the mark. If the registered owner has changed — assignment, merger, change of corporate name — the corresponding recordal must be entered on the register before renewal.
This is where US recordal habits create European problems. Chains of title left unrecorded for a decade have to be reconstructed at renewal time, sometimes involving entities that no longer exist — and a mark owned by a dissolved company can no longer be assigned at all. Treat every renewal as a scheduled chain-of-title audit. See assignment and recordals for how recordal works before INPI and the EUIPO.
Renewal can be total (all classes of the original registration) or partial (some classes only). Partial renewal reduces the INPI fee, but it permanently narrows the scope of the mark — a real loss of rights, not just a cost saving. It is a reasonable choice where lines of business have genuinely been abandoned; it is a false economy where the goods might return or retain blocking value against competitors.
Fees below are the official office fees; they come on top of attorney fees.
€290 for one class + €40 per additional class. Examples: 1 class €290; 2 classes €330; 3 classes €370; 5 classes €450; 10 classes €650.
€850 for the first class + €50 for the second + €150 for each class from the third. Examples: 1 class €850; 2 classes €900; 3 classes €1,050; 5 classes €1,350; 10 classes €2,100.
For how these fit into overall portfolio budgeting, see trademark fees and costs.
Our handling fee starts from €550 per renewal (French or EU mark), covering advice on the scope of the renewal, verification of the owner information on the register, filing the renewal request, payment of the official fee (rebilled at cost), monitoring through to confirmation, and delivery of the renewal certificate. Late renewals during the grace period start from €750 given the additional formalities. Regularizing an owner-change recordal, amending the specification, or a French Polynesia extension are quoted separately. Fees are billed in EUR or USD.
For US firms and in-house teams holding French and EU registrations, we operate as local renewal counsel:
A note on lapsed marks: if a French mark passes the six-month grace period, it is gone — the only route back is a new application, with a new filing date at the back of the priority queue, and a fresh clearance search is prudent because the register will have moved on in the meantime.
Send us your list of French/EU registrations and expiry dates — contact us for a renewal quote and a chain-of-title check.
Why US clearance doesn't cover France or the EU. Identical vs. similarity searches, prior-rights risk assessment, and opinions from a Paris IP boutique.
Assignments, change-of-name and address recordals before INPI and the EUIPO: why recording matters, fees, timing, documents — and INPI erratum requests.
Why watch French and EU registers: the 2-month INPI opposition window is non-extendable. What we monitor, how conflicts are flagged, and what happens next.