Thoughts on the increase in US patent application fees in 2025

The USPTO will increase official fee rates starting January 19, 2025. The USPTO has taken some unusual measures to increase the fees for continuing applications in old applications. That is, delayed continuing applications beyond the Earliest Date of Interest (EBD) for 6 years will be charged an additional $2,700, and those beyond 9 years will be charged an additional $4,000 (for large entities).

With this price increase, the USPTO has solved the practical problem of continued applications. That is, the patent is valid for 20 years from the date of application. If a continued application is submitted later in these 20 years, the USPTO will not be able to collect maintenance fees. The annual fees in the United States are payable 3.5 years, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years after authorization, and the fees are $2,000/800, $3,760/1,504, and $7,700/3,080 respectively. (Large/small entity) If a patent is authorized in the 15th year after the patent application is submitted, the patent will only have 5 years of validity, and the USPTO can only collect an annual fee of $2,000 for the 3.5th year, which means that the USPTO cannot receive the annual fees of $3,760 and $7,700 for the 7.5th and 11.5th years after authorization. Through the new policy, the USPTO can collect some fees in advance.

The second issue is to use prices to balance a large number of patents covering different implementations of a single product. In fact, as early as 2022, a number of senators wrote to the USPTO, calling for reforms to continued applications to increase fees in order to balance the number of continued applications after the 20-year statutory period expires, while also increasing USPTO revenue. This is similar to some practices of the EPO, such as filing a divisional application with the EPO, which is equivalent to a continued application with the USPTO, and the applicant needs to pay the initial annual fees for the parent case during the pending review period. For example, if a divisional application is submitted from a European application that has been under review for 5 years, 5 years of annual fees will need to be paid when the divisional application is submitted. The EPO even charges additional fees for second and subsequent generations of divisional applications, which increase with each generation.