Changes to the UK patent fees

1 February 2018

The UK IPO has recently announced that the patent fees will be changing on 6 April 2018.

Three new fees are being introduced – an excess claims fee, an excess pages fee, and a surcharge for paying the application fee after the filing date. The application fee, search fee and examination fee will also increase, and there will be a modest increase of £10 applied to every renewal fee.

It has to be said that, even with these fee increases, the UK official patent fees are still very low, and the “free” claims and pages allowance is comparatively generous. The basic fees include 25 claims and up to 35 pages of description. As such, we have reason to be thankful!

Nevertheless, if you are considering filing a UK application, particularly a long application with a substantial number of claims, it would be advantageous if you could do so before 6 April. Bearing in mind that 30 March and 2 April 2018 are public holidays in the UK, if you wish to file an application before the fees increase, please send us your instructions well in advance of this deadline.

The approximate cost of filing a UK application including less than 26 claims and less than 36 pages of description is as set out below:

An £22 excess claims fee will be payable for each claim over 25, and an £11 excess pages fee will be payable for each page of description over 35. For a national application, the claims fee is due when filing the search request, and the excess pages fee is due when requesting examination. For a PCT (UK) application, both fees is due on national phase entry.

In both cases, if the number of claims or pages of description subsequently increases, the additional excess claims or pages fee are payable at grant.

The costs mentioned above include the official fees and our charges, but do not include VAT (where payable). They include all activities associated with the filing and reporting the filing, but do not include translation costs (if required) , or any professional time drafting the application, reviewing the application for compliance with local requirements, making any amendments or corrections to the application, or procurement of any priority document. Such additional work would be charged at our usual rate.