United States – HR 4818: New USPTO Fees

As anticipated by our earlier report on this issue, HR 4818 came into force on Wednesday, December 8, 2004, which means that new patent and trademark fees came into force on the very same day. By way of a brief summary, the new fees particularly impact the following in terms of increases:

• Provisional Applications: The basic filing fee has increased to $200, with an additional new fee for applications exceeding 100 pages ($250 for each unit of 50 pages exceeding 100 pages).
• Utility, Plant and Design Applications: Separate fees for filing, searching, and examining an application (all of which are due on filing) now amount to $1000, $660 and $430, respectively; and for utility applications, there are new fees for applications exceeding 100 pages (see above) and increased excess claim fees ($200 for each independent claim exceeding 3 and $50 for each claim exceeding 20).
• Extension fees: The official fee for a one month extension increased to $120, with 2 – 5 month extensions (when available), now costing $450. $1020, $1590, or $2160, respectively.
• Issue fees: For utility applications, the basic issue fee is now $1400, plus a $300 publication fee; for Plant and Design applications the basic issue fees are now $1100 and $800, respectively.
• Maintenance fees: The fees due at 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years after grant of a utility patent are now $900, $2300, and $3800, respectively.
• Small entities: Still get a 50% reduction on most official fees, with a new additional $75 discount in the case of filing an utility application electronically.

The fees for obtaining patents have increased fairly significantly, particularly the fees due at filing. The division of the filing fees three separate fees, a basic filing fee, a search fee and an examination fee probably protends further increases in this area.