IP rights are not permanent. Trademarks, patents, and designs all require periodic renewal to remain in force. Miss a renewal and the right lapses — sometimes irreversibly. For a business that depends on its IP — its brand names, its patented technology, its registered designs — a missed renewal can mean the loss of a valuable asset that took years and significant investment to build.
Yet renewal management is often treated as a back-office task — routine, administrative, and given less attention than it deserves. This under-attention creates risk. When renewals are managed reactively rather than proactively, deadlines are missed, decisions are delayed, and money is wasted on renewing rights that no longer serve a business purpose.
This article explains how the main IP renewal cycles work, how to manage them efficiently through batching and structured instruction workflows, and how to use the renewal process as an opportunity to keep your portfolio aligned with your business.
Trademarks. In the EU, Benelux, and most other jurisdictions, trademarks are registered for an initial period of ten years from the filing date and can be renewed for successive ten-year periods indefinitely. Renewal fees must be paid before the expiry date. Most offices provide a grace period — six months at the EUIPO and the BOIP — during which renewal is still possible with a surcharge. After the grace period, the mark is cancelled and cannot be restored.
For international registrations under the Madrid System, renewals are centralised through WIPO. A single renewal payment to WIPO covers all designated countries. This is one of the administrative advantages of the Madrid System for portfolio management.
Patents. European patents require annual maintenance fees (annuities) in each country where the patent is validated. Annuities must be paid to the national office of each validated country, and the fee typically increases each year. At the European Patent Office, renewal fees are paid during the prosecution phase (from the third year after filing). Once the patent is granted and validated nationally, annuities are paid to each national office separately.
For Unitary Patents, a single annual renewal fee is paid to the EPO, covering all participating member states. This simplifies administration significantly compared to traditional validated European patents.
The maximum patent term is 20 years from the filing date in most jurisdictions. Unlike trademarks, patents cannot be renewed beyond their maximum term.
Designs. Registered Community designs at the EUIPO have an initial term of five years and can be renewed for up to four additional five-year periods, giving a maximum term of 25 years. Benelux designs follow a similar pattern with five-year renewal periods. National design registrations vary by jurisdiction.
The consequences of a missed renewal depend on the jurisdiction and the type of right.
For trademarks, most offices provide a grace period during which late renewal is possible — typically six months, with a surcharge. After the grace period, the mark is cancelled. Some jurisdictions allow reinstatement of lapsed marks under limited circumstances, but reinstatement is not guaranteed and is usually subject to strict conditions. In the meantime, the mark is off the register and a third party could file an application for the same mark.
For patents, the consequences are typically more severe. Most jurisdictions provide a grace period for late annuity payment (usually six months, with a surcharge), but after that the patent lapses and the invention enters the public domain. Reinstatement is available in some jurisdictions (including through the EPO’s restitutio in integrum procedure) but requires demonstrating that the failure was unintentional and that all due care was taken. The threshold is high and the outcome uncertain.
For designs, the grace period and reinstatement rules are generally similar to trademarks, but vary by jurisdiction.
In all cases, the simplest and cheapest approach is to pay on time. Grace periods exist as safety nets, not as scheduling tools.
For businesses with more than a handful of IP rights, managing renewals individually is inefficient and error-prone. Batching — grouping renewals that fall within the same period and handling them as a portfolio exercise — is more efficient and creates better outcomes.
A quarterly renewal review, for example, involves pulling all trademarks, patents, and designs due for renewal in the coming quarter, presenting them to the rights holder with the relevant context (what the right covers, where it is registered, whether it is being used, and the renewal cost), obtaining instructions on whether to renew each right, processing the renewals and payments, and confirming completion.
Batching provides several advantages. It reduces the administrative burden by handling multiple renewals in a single exercise rather than as dozens of individual tasks. It creates a natural portfolio review moment — each batch is an opportunity to assess whether every right still serves a business purpose. It reduces the risk of individual renewals falling through the cracks. And it allows for more accurate budgeting, because the upcoming renewal costs are visible in advance as a group rather than arriving as individual invoices.
The biggest operational risk in renewal management is not the system failing to generate an alert — it is the instruction not arriving in time. The law firm or IP service provider identifies the upcoming renewal, sends the client an instruction request, and waits for a response. If the response is delayed — because the responsible person is on holiday, the email gets buried, or the decision requires internal approval that stalls — the deadline approaches without a decision having been made.
A structured instruction workflow addresses this by starting early (first notification six months before expiry, with enough time for multiple follow-ups), providing complete information (what the right covers, the renewal cost, the deadline, and a clear question: renew or let lapse?), setting internal response deadlines that are earlier than the official deadline, escalating systematically if no response is received (to a senior contact, then to firm management, and ultimately to a protective renewal pending final instructions), and documenting every step (who was notified, when, and whether and when instructions were received).
The most effective instruction workflows make the decision easy. If the client receives a clear, concise renewal report with a recommended action and a cost estimate, the response is faster than if they receive a generic reminder that requires them to look up the details themselves.
Every renewal decision is, at its core, a business decision: is this right worth maintaining for another period? For trademarks, that means asking whether the mark is still in use, whether the goods and services specification still reflects the business, and whether the jurisdictional coverage is still aligned with the commercial footprint. For patents, it means asking whether the technology is still commercially relevant, whether the patent is being enforced or licensed, and whether the annuity cost is justified by the value of the monopoly.
Rights that are no longer commercially useful should be allowed to lapse. This is not a failure — it is portfolio hygiene. Businesses evolve, products are discontinued, brands are consolidated, and technologies become obsolete. Continuing to renew rights that no longer serve a purpose wastes money and creates unnecessary administrative burden.
The renewal batch is the most natural moment to ask these questions. Rather than treating each renewal as a binary pay/don’t-pay decision, use the batch review to step back and assess the portfolio as a whole: where are there gaps that need to be filled, where are there redundancies that can be trimmed, and where is the money best spent?
For businesses with IP registered in multiple countries, renewal management becomes a coordination exercise. Each country has its own renewal dates, fee schedules, grace periods, and procedural requirements. A trademark portfolio of 15 marks registered in five jurisdictions each creates 75 individual renewal events over a ten-year period — each with its own deadline and its own fee.
The Madrid System simplifies this for trademarks by centralising renewal through WIPO. The Unitary Patent simplifies it for patents by replacing multiple national annuities with a single EPO fee. But many portfolios include a mix of national, regional, and international rights, each with its own renewal mechanics. The IP management system — whether it is a professional platform, a firm’s case management system, or even a well-maintained spreadsheet — must capture all of these deadlines and treat them with the same level of attention regardless of the jurisdiction.
Delayed instructions. The most common cause of missed renewals is not a system failure but a human one: the instruction request was sent, but the response did not come in time. Escalation workflows exist to address this, but they only work if they are followed.
Renewing everything automatically. Auto-renewal without review wastes money on rights that are no longer needed. Every renewal should be a conscious decision, even if the decision is usually yes.
Ignoring cost escalation. Patent annuities increase annually. A patent that costs EUR 500 per year to maintain in year 5 may cost EUR 5,000 per year by year 15, across all validated countries. If you are not projecting renewal costs forward, you may be surprised by the cumulative burden.
No portfolio overview. If renewal decisions are made in isolation — one right at a time, one invoice at a time — you lose sight of the portfolio as a whole. Batching creates the visibility needed for strategic management.
If you need to review your renewal management processes or want to conduct a portfolio review, get in touch or schedule a meeting with our team.
%402x.svg){kind=small}
%402x.svg){kind=icon}
%402x.svg){kind=icon}
