INPIT has reopened the fourth round of its subsidy program for Japanese companies' foreign patent, trademark, design, and utility model filings, according to a listing on Japan's jGrants portal. The program's stated purpose is to fund part of the cost of registering inventions, utility models, designs, or trademarks abroad, in order to promote overseas rights acquisition and support companies' international intellectual-property strategy.
Eligibility is limited to small and midsize enterprises and qualifying test and research institutions, the listing says. It does not specify an employee-count threshold, a geographic restriction, or which cost categories (translation, foreign counsel, or official filing fees) qualify; applicants are told instead to consult the full public offering guidelines for that detail.
The listing likewise omits the subsidy rate, the maximum grant amount, the application period, and any project completion deadline. For a company weighing whether to file for protection abroad this year, those are the numbers that decide whether the paperwork is worth it, and none of them appear in the public announcement itself.
A secretariat operating under commission from a national invention-promotion association fields applicant questions by phone (03-3502-5424) and email ([email protected]) on weekdays from 10:00 to 17:00, excluding weekends, national holidays, and the year-end closure from December 29 to January 3.
The listing's own title, translated as "Round 4 of the INPIT Foreign Filing Subsidy" for the current fiscal year, confirms this is a recurring program rather than a single grant, though the announcement does not say how many companies previous rounds funded or what budget remains for this one.