Trademark Docketing in Toulouse.

Trademark docketing Toulouse aerospace and space brands rely on carries a specific French trap: a national mark runs ten years from its filing date, but loi PACTE changed exactly when that clock expires. For an Airbus, Thales Alenia Space or Latécoère supplier, the INPI national right usually sits beside a separate EU trademark at EUIPO, each on its own renewal date. PerspireIP builds the docket that keeps both the INPI and the EUTM clocks visible, so a Toulouse mark never lapses on a date the reform quietly moved.

Why trademark docketing Toulouse aerospace portfolios carry a moved deadline

The trademark docketing Toulouse aerospace and space groups rely on is less about volume than about a single moved date. Toulouse is Europe’s aerospace capital — the global headquarters of Airbus, the operations base of Thales Alenia Space, the home of the French space agency CNES and of Airbus Defence and Space, and a dense tier of suppliers such as Latécoère, Liebherr-Aerospace and Continental. These owners file French national marks at the INPI, often decades ago, and then layer EU and international rights on top as they sell worldwide.

A French national trademark runs for ten years from its filing date. What changed is the precise day that term ends: loi PACTE, the 2019 reform that transposed the EU trade mark package into French law, moved the renewal deadline from the end of the filing month to the exact filing anniversary. A mark registered before the reform and one registered after it can now sit on two different rules — and the older aerospace marks, filed quietly in the 1990s and renewed on autopilot, are exactly the ones a thin docket loses to a date that silently shifted.

• Aerospace capital — Airbus, Thales Alenia Space, CNES and Airbus Defence and Space anchor an Occitanie cluster of roughly 120,000 jobs
• Deep portfolios — supplier brands such as Latécoère, Liebherr-Aerospace and Continental hold French marks filed decades ago
• A moved date — loi PACTE shifted the renewal deadline from the end of the filing month to the exact filing anniversary
• The old mark is the risk — pre-reform registrations are the ones most often diarised on the wrong day

The French national mark: ten years from the filing date at INPI

Every mark protecting the French market directly is a national registration examined and granted by the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle. There is no Toulouse or Occitanie register — the INPI is the single national route, and a Toulouse brand is docketed against one INPI number, one class list and one filing (dépôt) date. The term is ten years from the filing date, renewable indefinitely for further ten-year periods, with renewal handled online through the INPI portal.

One structural limit matters for the docket. You cannot add goods or services, or change the sign, when you renew — those changes require a fresh application and a fresh filing date. So the renewal record must capture the exact specification as granted, and any brand evolution has to be tracked as a new right rather than folded into the existing clock. Because INPI renewal notices depend entirely on the address and representative on file, details that drift as a fast-growing Toulouse company moves premises or changes counsel, the diary cannot rely on the courtesy reminder alone.

• One national office — the INPI grants and renews French marks; there is no regional register for Toulouse or Occitanie
• Ten-year term — ten years from the filing date, renewable without limit in ten-year periods
• No scope changes on renewal — new goods, services or a redrawn sign need a fresh filing, not a renewal
• Contact details decide notice — INPI reminders only reach a current address, so renewal is diarised independently

Loi PACTE moved the renewal date: the straddle trap

Under the old French rule, a trademark was renewed in the six months before expiry and the deadline fell on the last day of the month in which the ten-year term ended — a mark filed on 15 March was effectively renewable to 31 March. A six-month grace period then ran from the first day of the following month. That end-of-month cushion is the habit most long-standing French dockets were built around.

Since 11 December 2019, loi PACTE replaced that with a sharper calendar: renewal can be requested across the whole year preceding expiry, but the deadline is now the exact tenth anniversary of the filing date — 15 March, not 31 March. The new regime applies where that one-year window began to run after 11 December 2019, meaning marks expiring from 11 December 2020 onward. The straddle trap is real: an older registration still measured to end-of-month and a newer one measured to the exact day live side by side in the same Toulouse portfolio, and a docket that applies one rule to both will diarise some marks days or weeks late.

• Old rule — deadline on the last day of the filing-anniversary month, renewable in the preceding six months
• New rule since 11 December 2019 — deadline on the exact filing anniversary, renewable across the preceding year
• Who it applies to — marks whose one-year window opened after 11 December 2019 (expiry from 11 December 2020)
• The straddle — pre- and post-reform marks coexist, so each is recomputed under the correct rule, never a blanket one

INPI grace period, late surcharge and the current fee schedule

Miss the expiry date and the INPI opens a six-month grace period (délai de retard), during which the mark can still be renewed on payment of the renewal fee plus a late surcharge. The surcharge is in the order of €145 (an uplift of roughly fifty percent on the fee). Let the grace period close without payment and the registration lapses and is struck from the register — after that only a fresh application, with a new filing date and loss of seniority, is possible.

On current INPI rates the online renewal fee is about €290 for one class, with roughly €40 for each additional class. Because the schedule is reviewed periodically, we confirm the live INPI fees before every payment rather than quoting from memory, and we renew inside the one-year early window rather than letting a mark drift toward the grace period. For a Toulouse supplier running dozens of marks, paying within the clean window avoids both the surcharge and the risk of a courtesy notice lost to a stale address.

• Grace period — six months after expiry on payment of the renewal fee plus a late surcharge of roughly €145
• Lapse is final — once the grace window closes the mark is struck off and only a new filing remains
• Fees — about €290 online for one class and roughly €40 per additional class, confirmed against the live INPI schedule
• Renew early — pay inside the one-year window to avoid both the surcharge and reliance on an INPI reminder

Two clocks: the INPI national mark versus the EUTM at EUIPO

Most Toulouse exporters hold more than the national right. A French INPI mark protects France alone, while the business sells across Europe, so an EU trademark (EUTM) is usually filed on top at the EUIPO in Alicante. The EUTM is renewed centrally for all 27 member states, also for ten years from its own filing date, with the request due in the six months before expiry and a six-month grace period afterwards on payment of the fee plus a 25 percent surcharge. Critically, the EUTM date is set by the EU filing and bears no relationship to the INPI anniversary.

The trademark docketing Toulouse counsel actually need therefore has to answer one question for every brand: which right protects France, and on what date? When a company holds both a French national mark and an EUTM for the same brand, France is covered twice, on two unrelated clocks — and retiring the older national mark to “rationalise” is defensible only once the docket proves it genuinely duplicates the EUTM. Often the two rights cover different classes, different word-and-logo versions or different priority dates, so both must be kept alive. A docket that silently assumes the EUTM covers everything is how the older INPI right is abandoned by neglect.

• Separate dates — the EUTM renews on its own EU filing date, unconnected to the INPI anniversary
• Different grace regime — EUIPO applies a 25 percent late surcharge, while the INPI applies a fixed-euro surcharge
• Route mapping — the docket records, per brand, whether France is protected by the national mark, the EUTM, or both
• No silent drop — a national mark is retired only on a documented decision, never by a calendar that forgot it

Non-use revocation, opposition and INPI administrative actions

Keeping a mark renewed is not the same as keeping it defensible. A French mark is open to revocation for non-use (déchéance) once it has not been put to genuine use for a continuous period of five years, with no proper reason. Use must be real and in connection with the registered goods or services, and the burden of proving it falls on the owner, so contemporaneous evidence is kept against every mark. Opposition runs on a short fuse of two months from publication of a later application — a deadline as fatal to a brand as a missed renewal.

Loi PACTE also changed the forum. Since 2020 the INPI hears administrative revocation (déchéance) and invalidity (nullité) actions directly, a faster and cheaper route than the civil courts, with appeals to the competent Cour d’appel. On top of the national and EU layers, Toulouse brands that file worldwide through the Madrid Protocol carry a third clock: an international registration renews centrally at WIPO in Geneva on its own ten-year cycle and, for its first five years, depends on the base French or EU mark — a non-use or invalidity hit on that base during the dependency window can collapse the whole international registration.

• Five-year rule — non-use for five continuous years exposes a French mark to revocation; keep genuine proof of use current
• Two-month opposition — opposition is filed within two months of publication and docketed like any renewal
• INPI forum since PACTE — revocation and invalidity are decided administratively at the INPI, with appeals to the Cour d’appel
• Madrid clock — a WIPO international registration renews on its own cycle and depends on the base mark for five years

How PerspireIP runs a Toulouse trademark docket

The trademark docketing Toulouse companies actually need starts with a reconciliation, not a reminder. We take the register extract and, for every brand, pair the French INPI mark against any EUTM and any Madrid international registration, recompute each renewal date under the correct rule — end-of-month for pre-reform marks, exact filing anniversary for those caught by loi PACTE — and map which right is protecting France. The result is one clean view in which a 1990s aerospace mark and the headline EUTM are never again mistaken for a single right.

From there we run a living docket that tracks each clock independently and surfaces every deadline well before it bites — the ten-year INPI renewal with its one-year early window and six-month grace, the separate EUTM and WIPO cycles, the five-year non-use exposure, and the short fuses on opposition and INPI revocation or invalidity responses. The aim is simple: no Toulouse mark is ever lost to a date the PACTE reform moved, a mismatched EU anniversary, or an INPI notice sent to an address the company left two funding rounds ago.

• Reconciliation — pair every INPI mark with its EUTM and Madrid registration and record which right protects France
• Rule-correct dates — each renewal recomputed under the old end-of-month rule or the post-PACTE exact-anniversary rule
• Renewal calendar — the full INPI window docketed with live fees confirmed, alongside the separate EUIPO and WIPO dates
• Contentious dates — opposition, revocation and invalidity deadlines surfaced with the same rigour as a renewal
• One point of control — INPI, EUIPO and WIPO deadlines managed centrally, with reminders that never depend on a stale address

We work alongside your French or European trademark attorney and your in-house team as a specialist docketing partner, keep every matter confidential, and scale from a handful of marks to a full international programme. Send us the register extract and we will return a clean, reconciled docket with every clock — French national, EU and Madrid — mapped and dated.

IP Landscape & Resources in Toulouse

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Toulouse:

• INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle) — the French national office that examines, grants and renews French trademarks for ten-year terms from the filing date, and since loi PACTE decides administrative revocation and invalidity actions directly
• EUIPO — the EU Intellectual Property Office in Alicante where an EU trademark is maintained and renewed for all 27 member states on its own ten-year filing-date clock, independent of the INPI renewal date
• WIPO – Madrid System — administers the Madrid Protocol; an international registration is renewed centrally through WIPO in Geneva on its own ten-year cycle and depends on its base French or EU mark for the first five years
• Légifrance – Code de la propriété intellectuelle — the official French statute portal carrying the Code de la propriété intellectuelle as amended by loi PACTE, the source of the renewal, grace-period and non-use revocation rules

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