USPTO puts up prices for 2018
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced it will increase some of its fees from January 2018, including a $6,500 increase to $15,500 for requesting an inter partes review (IPR).
Yesterday, November 14, it issued a final rule, “ Setting and adjusting patent fees during fiscal year 2017”.
The USPTO had previously published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), which asked for comments on potential fee increases.
However, along with increasing the IPR request fee, the USPTO added $1,000 to the cost of the IPR post-institution fee, which is now $15,000.
When a party files for an IPR, the USPTO requires a review request fee and a post-institution fee.
The rises mean the total cost of an IPR now stands at $30,500, an increase of $7,500.
“Stakeholder feedback suggested that increased appeal fees could discourage patent holders’ access to increasingly important USPTO appeal services,” the latest report stated.
While the USPTO chose to keep the notice of appeal fee at $800, the cost of forwarding an appeal to the board has increased by $240, to $2,240.
The increases “still do not fully recover costs, but taken together, should allow continued progress on reducing the backlog of ex parte appeals”, according to the USPTO.
Previous fee increases had enabled the USPTO to reduce the backlog from nearly 27,000 in 2012 to just over 13,000 at the end of 2017, and the USPTO said further increases would allow it to continue to reduce the backlog further.
“The USPTO operates like a business in that external and internal factors affect the demand for patent products and services,” the USPTO explained.
“The fee adjustments are needed to provide the office with a sufficient amount of aggregate revenue to recover its aggregate cost of patent operations.”
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