Author: Dong Ruonan Time: 05.08.2020

On August 3rd, USPTO released the final fee standards in the “2020 Fiscal Year Patent Office Fee Setting and Adjustment”, which will officially take effect on October 2nd, 2020. The official statement states that this fee adjustment aims to provide a stable economic foundation for the operation of USPTO, enabling USPTO to continue improving the quality of patent inspections, optimizing examination time, and investing in modern (IT) systems and infrastructure for patent information technology.

Common official fee adjustments can be found in the following table:

From the above table, the following main cost changes can be seen:

1. The annual fee late fee has increased the most, up to 212.5%

2. The invention license fee has increased significantly, by 20%

3. The accelerated examination fee for appearance patents has increased significantly, by about 77.8%

4. An additional application fee of $400 has been added for submitting non docx files (small/micro entities can enjoy discounts of 50% and 75% respectively)

To save the applicant’s official expenses, the applicant should expedite the submission of the application. In addition, the late fee for this annual fee is relatively large in both proportion and absolute amount, which requires the applicant and patent agency to have systematic management of the case, conduct early assessment, and ensure that patent operations that need to be maintained are completed within the deadline. As for the unit where the author works, a complete case management system has been established to ensure that all nodes of the case lifecycle can be completed according to professional and deadline requirements. Currently, the system hosts hundreds of thousands of patent cases and automatically reminds relevant personnel to handle them in a timely manner. In addition, the applicant and the case agency need to be able to timely grasp the changes in the US patent system and policies and provide corresponding cooperation measures. ScienBiziP Group has its own patent law firm in the United States and arranges a professional team to study and monitor the changes in relevant policies, providing professional solutions in real time.

【 Reference 】

one https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/performance-and-planning/summary-fy-2020-final-patent-fee-rule ；