USPTO Proposes New Fees: Large Increases for Patent Application and PTAB Trial Fees

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed patent fee adjustments in a notice of proposed rulemaking published on September 30, 2016.  Comments on the fee adjustments must be received on or before December 2, 2016.

The proposal includes:

• Major increases to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) trial fees, such as:
  • Inter Partes Review fees from $23,000 to $30,500;
  • Similar fee increases for Post-Grant and Covered Business Method Reviews Request fees;
• Moderate large entity fee increase for utility patent applications (filing, search and examination) and moderate excess claim fee increases for applications with greater than 3 independent claims or greater than 20 dependent claims; similar fee increases for small and micro entities;
• Moderate large entity fee increase for design patent filing, search, and examination fee rates; and
• New fee for sequence listing submissions of > 300 MB ($1000) and > 800 MB ($10,000).

The USPTO Press Release is available here.

The Federal Register Notice is available here.

Additional Commentary is available here.

Summary By: Robert Dewald