This decree amends 35 articles of the intellectual property code and enters into force on July 2, 2026. The main measures are as follows.

Electronic notification

To complete the digitization of procedures, all paper-based notifications are discontinued. Notifications will now be sent exclusively electronically. An email will be sent to the recipient informing them that a notification is available in their personal space on the INPI's e-procedures portal. If no email address is provided, the Intellectual Property Code stipulates that a notice must be published in the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property, as was previously the case if the postal address was unknown. Users wishing to have notifications sent to an email address different from the one used to log in to their account are asked to complete the correspondence address in each application (trademarks, patents, designs).

Regime of royalties paid

All reimbursements provided for under the Intellectual Property Code are hereby discontinued, except for the search report fee if the report has not yet been prepared. Thus, in cases of inadmissibility, closure of patent limitation proceedings following opposition, failure to provide a translation during the conversion of a European patent, or failure to transmit an international patent extension application to the World Intellectual Property Office, the fees paid will no longer be refunded. This measure applies to all applications filed on or after July 2, 2026.

Alignment of the reduction criterion for SMEs with the European definition

The threshold for benefiting from the SME reduction on patent royalties has been lowered to 250 employees, in line with the European definition of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), instead of the previous 1000. This new threshold applies to patent applications filed from July 2, 2026. Furthermore, the application for the reduction, indicating the category of the organization (SME or non-profit), must now be submitted immediately upon filing, rather than within one month of filing.

Data protection

To ensure compliance with the requirements of the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority) regarding the protection of personal data, the home addresses of individuals filing industrial property titles will no longer be published or disseminated in the registers and the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property. They will therefore no longer appear on the DATA INPI website to respect the confidentiality of personal data, as is already the case for the National Business Register (RNE).

Other simplification and harmonization measures

Several other measures have been adopted to facilitate the filing and processing of applications:

• The decision period for trademark oppositions and cancellations is aligned with patent oppositions and is extended to four months instead of three, with immediate application, including for cases pending on July 2, 2026;

• Trademark oppositions can be rectified in the event of inadmissibility, which was not possible until now;

• The envelopes for employee invention declarations are eliminated;

• It is no longer necessary for the applicant of a patent application to provide a copy of previous filings in the event of an internal priority request, as the INPI has access to these documents elsewhere;

• The deadline for third-party observations for utility certificates is set at three months after publication, as for patents;

• Proposals to amend the patent may be introduced in the opposition procedure until the end of the oral phase, subject to an adversarial debate;

• Patent abstracts can be drawn up by the INPI and no longer just formatted, thus avoiding back-and-forth communication with applicants;

• The printing of patent booklets has been discontinued.

These measures will streamline procedures in the interest of businesses.

(Decree No. 2026-576 of June 30, 2026, together with the list of amended provisions, is available as a PDF for download on the original page.)

Source: INPI France, original release date: 2026-07-01, original link: https://www.inpi.fr/en/in-one/publication-of-a-decree-simplifying-the-intellectual-property-code