Changes to fees for UK patent applications from 6 April 2018

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has recently announced that it will be increasing the official fees on UK patent applications on 6 April 2018 as well as some of the renewal fees needed to keep granted UK patents in force.

In short, the fee increases will be relatively small for most UK patent applications and are unlikely to affect patent application strategy for UK-based patent applicants. The modest fee increases reflect the UK Government’s ongoing commitment to affordable UK patent protection but will increase costs for certain types of patent applications or patent application strategies that are more time-consuming for the UKIPO to handle.

What fees will change?

The fee increases will affect both paper and electronic filings of patent applications. All fees for paper filings will be higher than electronic filings and we will continue our standard electronic filing practice for all clients.

For all e-filed applications, there will be a minimum increase in total application fees of £80 as follows:

• Increase to the application fee from £20 to £60, and introduction of a 25% surcharge if it is not paid at the time of filing.
• Increase to the official search fees from £130 to £150
• Increase to the substantive examination fee from £80-£100

However, the UKIPO has also introduced two new additional fees:

• Excess claims fees of £20 for each claim over 25 (payable with the search fee)
• Excess pages fee of £10 for each page of description over 35 (payable with the examination fee)

This means that longer patent applications and longer sets of claims will incur higher costs on a sliding scale.

Read more here.