Patent Fee Adjustments

The Federal Register for Jan. 18, 2013 contains a final rule pertaining to setting and adjusting patent fees. To see the complete rule access http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-01-18/html/2013-00819.htm The following excerpt from the summary provides a rationale for changing the fees:

The United States economy depends on high quality and timely patents to protect new ideas and investments for business and job growth. To reduce the backlog and decrease patent application pendency,the USPTO must examine significantly more patent applications than it receives each year for the next several years. Bringing the number of applications in the backlog down to a manageable level, while at the same time keeping pace with the new patent applications expected to be filed each year, requires the Office to collect more aggregate revenue than it estimates that it will collect at existing fee rates. The Office estimates that the additional aggregate revenue derived from this fee schedule will enable a decrease in total patent application pendency by 11.3 months during the five-year planning horizon (fiscal year (FY) 2013-FY 2017), thus permitting a patentee to obtain a patent sooner than he or she would have under the status quo fee schedule. The additional revenue from this fee schedule also will recover the cost to begin building a three-month patent operating reserve. The Office estimates that the patent operating reserve will accumulate almost two months of patent operating expenses by the end of the five-year planning horizon (FY 2013-FY 2017) and will reach the three-month target in FY 2018, thereby continuing to build a sustainable funding model that will aid the Office in maintaining shorter pendency and an optimal patent application inventory.

Additionally, the fee schedule in this final rule will advance key policy considerations while taking into account the cost of individual services. For example, the rule includes multipart and staged fees for requests for continued examination (RCEs), appeals, and contested cases, all of which aim to increase patent prosecution options for applicants. Also, this rule includes a new 75 percent fee reduction for micro entities and expands the availability of the 50 percent fee reduction for small entities as required under section 10, providing small entities a discount on more than 25 patent fees that do not currently qualify for a small entity discount.