Press release, Pau, France, 31 August 2026.
The standing committee of the Regional Council voted this seed grant on 6 July 2026. lipstip builds an artificial intelligence dedicated to trademark protection, developed in France and hosted in Europe.
An AI built on European legal reasoning, at the service of the expert
Across Europe, the vast majority of SMEs do not protect their trademarks, while companies holding intellectual property rights generate on average 44% more revenue per employee (EPO/EUIPO). IP attorneys and lawyers are best placed to close that gap, but they are under-equipped.
lipstip was founded in 2023 to remove that bottleneck. Its platform, launched in May 2026 after several years of R&D carried out with the University of Pau and CY Tech, takes on case law research and the preparation of opposition briefs, so that professionals can spend their hours on analysis and advice.
lipstip is built on an architecture of specialised models, trained on the official decisions of the offices and of the European courts. Its corpus holds more than two million signs, goods and services and points of reasoning from the INPI, the EUIPO, and the French and European courts.
In AI, a requirement for precision and sovereignty
Every analysis sets out the reasoning it followed and links back to the decisions that support it, so that the professional can accept, qualify or reject each argument in full knowledge of the facts.
“Within a few years, trademark law in Europe will be written with the help of artificial intelligence. Two questions matter today: who will have built it, and how. We want it to be European, and built on the actual case law of the offices, with the degree of precision demanded by a profession where every word carries liability. That is what we are building from Pau.”Nicolas Vonthron, co-founder and CEO of lipstip
What the Region supports
The regional grant supports lipstip’s 2026 roadmap, centred on instance chaining: linking every first-instance decision to the appeal, cassation and European court rulings that confirm or overturn it, so that a single search returns the full chain of reasoning. It also supports the continued industrialisation of the platform, at the level of traceability and reliability that regulated professions expect.
Under the terms of the agreement, lipstip commits to maintaining its jobs in Nouvelle-Aquitaine for three years and to implementing a transition plan aligned with the region’s Néo Terra roadmap, covering in particular professional equality between women and men and the climate transition. The platform’s frugal architecture, designed to run on European infrastructure at low consumption, follows the same logic.
This support adds to a path built since the company was founded: Bpifrance Deeptech label, Young Innovative Company status, French Tech Émergence grant, GENCI and OVHcloud Scale Up programmes, and research partnerships with the University of Pau and CY Tech.
About lipstip
Founded in Pau, France in 2023 by Nicolas Girardin, Nicolas Vonthron and Alexander Lerbs, lipstip is a French deeptech company specialising in artificial intelligence for intellectual property. Its platform equips IP attorneys, lawyers and in-house legal teams for case law research and trademark defence. Backed by Hélioparc, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region and Aquiti Gestion, it conducts its research in partnership with the University of Pau and CY Tech. All of its data is hosted in Europe.
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Press contact
contact@lipstip.com
Project funded with the support of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region.