Major Changes for Patent Official Fees
Since 2010, official fees charged for a request for substantive examination have been based on the number of claims to reflect the varying burden on TIPO. However, official fees for other types of examination requests that may also require a claim-by-claim analysis were not adjusted at that time. For example, the official fees for re-examination requests for invention patents, invalidation requests against invention or utility model patents, and technical evaluation report requests for utility model patents were not adjusted along with the change to official fees for substantive examination.
With the implementation of the new Patent Act on January 1, 2013, patent official fees will undergo major changes; in particular, requests that are currently charged a flat rate will be charged a fee by the number of claims associated with the requests.
The major changes to fees are summarized in the table of official fees below.
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