How to register a trademark in Italy, the EU and abroad

Marchi+ opened at noon on 4 December 2025 and ran out of money the same day. Unioncamere’s portal counted 1,161 applications asking for more than €2.8 million, against €2 million. This year’s €2 million is already set aside, but on 9 October the ministry’s list of decrees still showed no 2026 call. And the EU’s SME Fund has run out of trade mark vouchers.

So budget the fees yourself, to the euro. This guide shows how to register a trademark in Italy, across the EU and internationally: official fees as published today, timing, the clearance search, classes and the steps in order. New to building a company? Start from the beginner’s map, from zero to a first round.

Before you register a trademark: is the name free, and is it strong?

Search first. TMview, EUIPO’s free search engine, holds applications and registrations from every national office in the EU, Italy’s included, plus EUIPO and many offices outside the EU. Italy’s patent and trademark office, the UIBM, has a database of its own as well. Search your exact name. Then search the names that sound like it when said aloud, in every class you’ll use. EUIPO itself notes that ‘the most frequent challenges’ to new applications come from other registered marks.

A free name can still be refused. Italy’s Industrial Property Code, in article 13, bars any sign with no distinctive character. Generic names fail. So do words that only describe the goods: their kind, quality, quantity, purpose, value or geographical origin. EUIPO checks every EU application the same way, for whether it’s ‘distinctive and not descriptive’.

Say you sell fresh pasta online from Bologna and want to call the shop Pasta Fresca Online. Three words, all describing the product. Expect an objection, or at best a mark too weak to stop a competitor using similar words. Art. 13 lets a descriptive sign through only if use had made it distinctive before filing, which a new startup can rarely show. An invented word is harder to explain in month one, and much easier to defend in year five.

Italian, EU or international: which route fits?

There are three doors, and they stack. A national mark filed with the UIBM protects you in Italy. An EU trade mark filed with EUIPO gives, in its words, ‘protection throughout the whole of the EU with just one application’. The Madrid system, run by WIPO, carries a mark you’ve already filed at home to any of the 133 countries covered by its 117 members, with ‘one set of fees’.

Which one first? It depends on where you’ll sell in the next two or three years, the question behind any go-to-market plan, meaning how you reach your first customers. Italy only for now? The national mark is cheap and enough. Spain and Germany next year? The EU mark covers both. The UK doesn’t: since 1 January 2021 EU marks are ‘no longer protected trade marks in the UK’, worth knowing before you expand to the UK from Italy.

The US needs its own filing or a Madrid designation, and our guide on how to enter the US market from Italy covers the rest of that move. Timing helps, too. File in Italy and a six-month clock starts. Under the Paris Convention, the same mark filed abroad before it runs out keeps your Italian date. Hence one sensible sequence: Italy first, then the EU or Madrid within six months, once you’ve tested demand abroad.

What does it cost? UIBM, EUIPO and Madrid fees in 2026

These are the official fees as published on 9 October 2026, before any attorney’s bill.

	Italy (UIBM)	European Union (EUIPO)	International (WIPO Madrid)
Covers	Italy	The whole EU	The countries you designate, among 133
First class	€101, plus €48 stamp duty online	€850	Basic fee CHF 653 (CHF 903 in colour)
Each extra class	€34	€50 for the second, €150 each from the third	CHF 100 each beyond three
Per country	None	None	CHF 100, or the country’s own fee: US CHF 460 per class; UK CHF 240 plus CHF 64 per extra class; Switzerland CHF 400 up to three classes
Opposition or refusal	3 months from publication	3 months from publication	Each country has 12 months to refuse, or 18 if it has declared so
Lasts	10 years from filing, renewable	10 years, renewable indefinitely	10 years, renewable

In Italy, renewal costs €67 for one class plus €34 for each extra class, filed in the twelve months before expiry. Filing on paper at a Chamber of Commerce means a €40 fee and a €16 stamp for every four pages instead of the online stamp, so the UIBM portal also works out cheaper.

Let’s price a case. Say a Turin startup files a word mark in two classes. In Italy, online: €101 + €34 + €48 = €183. The EU mark: €850 + €50 = €900. A Madrid application built on the Italian mark, in black and white, designating the US, the UK and Switzerland: CHF 653 + 920 + 304 + 400 = CHF 2,277. WIPO’s fee calculator prices your own list. An attorney’s fee comes on top of every line.

How long does registration take, and how long does it last?

The UIBM examines applications in order of filing, and the procedure should close within 180 days, not counting suspensions such as the opposition window. A mark that passes is published in the Bollettino dei marchi d’impresa, and owners of earlier marks or other rights then have three months to oppose. No opposition? The registration certificate is sent to your email or PEC address.

At EUIPO the basic fee is due within one month of filing, and examination starts only once it’s paid. Publication follows, then the same three-month opposition period, then registration. With Madrid, each office you designate gets twelve months to refuse protection, or eighteen where it has declared so.

All three last ten years. An Italian registration runs from the filing date, and you must start genuine use within five years of registration, or the mark can lapse. One more trap sits in the Madrid Protocol (art. 6): for five years the international registration depends on the home mark. If your Italian or EU mark falls in that window, the international protection falls with it.

Can you get the fees back? Marchi+ and the SME Fund

Two schemes have paid part of the bill, and both ran dry. Marchi+, the ministry’s measure for micro, small and medium companies, run by Unioncamere, refunded in 2025 up to 80% of an EU trade mark’s costs (capped at €6,000 per mark) and up to 90% of an international one (capped at €9,000), a little more with gender equality certification. The catch: the mark had to be filed from 1 January 2022 and already registered, or published in WIPO’s Madrid Monitor, and requests were served in order of arrival.

For 2026, a decree of 28 July set aside €2 million for Marchi+ and gave the ministry thirty days from its publication in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, on 29 August, to issue the calls. That window closed in late September, and the ministry’s list of decrees still shows no call. We track the Italian measures in our page on Brevetti+, Disegni+ and Marchi+ 2026.

The EUIPO SME Fund 2026 runs from 2 February to 4 December and can save small businesses up to 75% on IP applications. But its trade mark and design voucher is ‘unavailable for new applications as funds have been exhausted’. Filing a patent too? Read how to patent an idea in Italy. And a trademark isn’t one of the three criteria for innovative startup status in Italy, which look at R&D spending, the team, or a patent or registered software.

How to register a trademark: the steps in order

1. Search TMview and the UIBM database for the name, and for names that sound like it, in your classes.
2. Test the name against art. 13. If it only describes the product, change it before the logo is printed.
3. Pick your classes with EUIPO’s TMclass tool: the Nice Classification has 45, and version NCL 13-2026 has applied since 1 January. Include what you’ll sell soon.
4. File: the UIBM portal with a digital signature, EUIPO e-filing, or Madrid through the office holding your home mark.
5. Pay on time. EUIPO waits for the fee, due within a month, before examining.
6. Watch the three-month opposition window and answer objections by their deadline.
7. Diary the dates: six months of priority, five years to start use, renewal in the last twelve months.

Checklist before you file

• TMview shows no identical or similar mark in your classes.
• The applicant is the company, not a founder, so investors find the mark among its assets. No company yet? Compare SRL vs SpA for a startup.
• You’ll file before your MVP, the first bare version of the product, goes public under the name.
• You know your first foreign markets, or you’ll answer the six questions of a market entry strategy first.
• Any invoice not sent by the office itself goes in the bin: EUIPO ‘never sends invoices or letters requesting direct payment for services’.

If the trademark is one piece of a move abroad, Adaxit’s cross-border expansion service helps founders and SMEs plan growth between Italy, the rest of Europe, the US and Latin America.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Fees and calls change: check the UIBM, EUIPO and WIPO pages or ask a trademark attorney before you file.