Glossary
French: taxes INPI
INPI fees (taxes INPI) are the official fees payable to the INPI when filing a trademark, a design or a patent — the French equivalent of USPTO government fees. Their amounts are set by the INPI, and trademark filing fees are not subject to VAT.
| Procedure | Official fee |
|---|---|
| Filing, one class | €190 |
| Filing, two classes | €230 |
| Each additional class | €40 |
| Opposition, one ground | €400 |
| Opposition, two grounds | €550 |
| Each additional ground | €150 |
| Renewal | €290 |
| French Polynesia extension | €60 |
Renewal has its own grace mechanism: a mark can still be renewed up to six months after expiry, subject to a 50% surcharge on the €290 fee — miss that window and the registration lapses and must be refiled as a new application. See trademark renewal for the full timeline.
These figures are notably lower than USPTO fees (currently $350 per class for a TEAS filing) — official fees are rarely the cost driver of a French filing; attorney work on the goods and services and the clearance search is.
A US company weighing a French national filing against an EU trademark will find the government fees structured similarly but priced differently. EUIPO filing is €850 for the first class, €50 for the second, and €150 for each further class; opposition is a flat €320 regardless of the number of grounds invoked; and the renewal grace period is also six months, but with a 25% surcharge rather than the INPI’s 50%. A company filing in two classes would pay €230 to the INPI versus €900 to the EUIPO in government fees alone — a gap worth weighing when deciding whether to file nationally in France, at the EU level, or both. See EU trademark registration and trademark opposition before the EUIPO for the procedure behind these numbers.
Failure to pay an INPI fee renders the procedure or the request inadmissible — there is no grace mechanism comparable to some USPTO petition practice. Fees are payable through the INPI’s online e-procedures portal at the time the application, opposition or renewal is filed, and electronic filing has largely eliminated the fee-calculation errors that used to occur with paper filings and oppositions — but it has not softened the consequence: an application filed without the correct fee is simply not accorded a filing date.
INPI fees come up at every stage of the French trademark lifecycle: budgeting a filing (see French trademark registration), assessing the cost of contesting or defending an application (see trademark opposition before the INPI), and planning renewals (see trademark renewal). For the full cost picture, including attorney fees and EUIPO amounts, see trademark fees and costs. On the glossary side, see trademark filing and INPI opposition.