On January 18, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued new rules setting and adjusting patent fees. Under the America Invents Act (AIA), the PTO has increased authority to set and change the fees it charges in order to cover its expected aggregate costs of providing services. The PTO has estimated its costs for patent services for fiscal year 2013 at $2.53 billion, and adjusted fees based on forecasts about the number of filings and its costs for rendering particular services. These fees will, for the most part, take effect on March 19, 2013.

Significant fee increases for large entities include:

  o The combined filing, search, and examination fee due at filing is up $340, for a total of $1,600.
  o Excess claim fees are increased to $420 for each independent claim over three and $80 for each claim over twenty.
  o Requests for Continued Examination (RCE) are increased to $1,200 for a first request, and each RCE after that will cost $1,700.
  o Maintenance fees are increased by $3,740 over the life of the patent, to $12,600. The biggest increase is in the 11 ½ year fee, which will be $7,400, an increase of $2,590.

Significant decreases include:

  o The fee for filing an ex parte reexamination request is down over $5,000 to $12,000.
  o Fees for filing for inter partes review or post grant review have been reduced by thousands of dollars.
  o Issue fees are reduced about 45% to $960, but this does not take effect until January 1, 2014. In the meantime, the issue fee is up $10 to $1,780. The publication fee (previously $300) is also eliminated, effective January 1, 2014.

Many fees are reduced by 50% for patent applicants who qualify as a “small entity”, and by 75% for those who qualify for the new “micro entity” status.

The full fee schedule that becomes effective on March 19, 2013 is available here.