USPTO Releases Patent Fee Schedule for 2018November 20, 2017

This past week, the USPTO released its final patent fee schedule for 2018. The USPTO has been actively seeking to reduce the overall patent pendency, number of unexamined applications, and reduce its appeal backlog. Part of these efforts have been the continual recruiting and training of new examiners and new Administrative Law Judges at the Patent and Trial Appeal Board. The USPTO is also working on updating its critical IT infrastructure. With these goals it is no surprise that the USPTO is increasing fees in many areas. They have provided a Table of the changes available here. The fee changes are expected to bring an additional 4% of revenue to the USPTO each fiscal year. Notably, no changes are being made to maintenance fees. Examples of some of the fee changes are highlighted below based on the change to the large entity fee:

  • Basic Patent (Utility, Design, and Provisional) Filing Fee increasing $20
  • Utility Application Search Fee is increasing by $60
  • Design Application Search Fee is increasing by $40
  • Utility Application Examination Fee is increasing by $40
  • Design Application Examination Fee is increasing by $140

Thus, for a large entity the total filing fee is increasing for a utility application from $1600 to $1720 and for a design from $760 to $960. Similarly, for a small entity the total filing fee is increasing for a utility application from $800 to $860 and for a design from $380 to $480.

Jonathan Kennedy is an Intellectual Property Attorney in the Biotechnology/Chemical Patent Practice Group at McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC. For additional information please visit www.ipmvs.com or contact Jonathan directly via email at jonathan.kennedy@ipmvs.com.

 

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