The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed new patent fees for 2025, which will include significantly increased fees in most cases, and is soliciting written comments from the public before June 3, 2024.
Authorized to propose new fees under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), the USPTO is claiming these increased fees are necessary to provide the agency with revenue to recover the costs of patent operations in the future. The increases are based on the agency’s projections for the number of patent applications that will be processed in the coming years, using estimates found in the agency’s Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Justification and its Strategic Plan for 2022-2026.
For example, a Basic Filing Fee for Undiscounted Entities will rise from $220 to $300. Basic filing fees for small and micro entities will increase, too, although the fee will be less. It is still a significant increase, however, rising from $88 to $120 for small entities and $44 to $60 for micro entities. All of these increases represent a 36 percent increase in filing fees, and fees for other Design applications have increased more than that.
Fees for Excess Claims are rising by 25 percent, pretty much across the board, with the exception of claims of more than 20, which are doubling. Notably, however, fees for Extension of Time for Provisional Applications are being reduced by varying amounts.
For a look at all the proposed fees for 2025 and the procedure for submitting written comments, please visit the Federal Register by following this link: https://tinyurl.com/4ntreh2u.
In Other USPTO News:
In March, the USPTO issued a memo for all patent examiners reiterating the agency’s current practices and resources for examining means-plus-function and step-plus-function limitations. According to the USPTO, the memo is meant to reinforce for the examiners the “importance of properly interpreting such limitations and of making the record clear as to (the examiner’s) interpretations.” The complete memo can be found by following this link: https://tinyurl.com/5yjxmej2.