Changes in the fee structure of the European Patent Office, valid as of April 1, 2009

Already in 2008, the fee structure of the European Patent Office was changed. On April 1, 2009, a new fee structure will become effective as concerns European patent applications (European divisional applications included) filed as of April 1 , 2009, and as concerns international applications entering the regional phase before the European Patent Office as of April 1, 2009. The new changes comprise the introduction of a two-tier system of claim fees, an additional fee payable upon filing, a flat designation fee, and a new flat fee for grant and publication.

As of April 1, 2009, an additional fee will be payable for patent applications with more than 35 pages. That is, besides the filing fee, an additional fee of EUR 12.00 will have to be paid for the 36th page, and each further page. In return, the page fees for sequence protocols which meet the WIPO standard 25, and the page fees upon grant of patent will be omitted, the latter so far having been paid in the form of a printing fee together with the granting fee.

Until now, EUR 85.00 has had to be paid for each contracting state of the European Patent Convention to be designated, with the designation fees having been regarded as paid for all contracting states upon payment of the seven-fold amount. As of April 1, 2009, a flat designation fee of EUR 500.00 will have to be paid, irrespective of the number of contracting states designated. This will reduce the fees to be paid for applications for which seven or more contracting states have been designated. In turn, the fee will be correspondingly higher for applications for which only two to three contracting states have been designated, e.g.

As of April 1, 2008, additional fees of EUR 200.00 have had to be paid to the European Patent Office for the 16th claim, and each further claim. As of April 1, 2009, an additional tier will be introduced so that a claim fee of EUR 500.00 will have to be paid for the 51st claim, and each further claim.

The changes will not affect the other fees to be paid to the European Patent Office, e.g. application fees, search and examination fees, and annuity fees for European patent applications. The changes only relate to the terms of payment for annuity fees. Until now, it has been possible to pay the annuity fees one year in advance. As of April 1, 2009, this term will be reduced to three months, with payments received by the European Patent Office one month before the three-month term enters into force being regarded as paid with its entry into force.

The European Patent Office has elaborated this new fee structure to reduce the size of application documents to be examined, and to at least partially simplify fee payment. To save costs, it has still to be taken care of that the number of pages, and claims, is within the limit introduced by the new fee structure or is only slightly beyond it. As to international patent applications which comprise far more than 35 pages and/or for which less than six contracting states are to be designated, it is advisable to introduce the regional phase ahead of schedule since the new fee structure only applies to European (divisional) applications filed as of April 1, 2009, and to international applications entering the regional phase before the European Patent Office as of April 1, 2009. It is also advisable to file already planned divisional applications of European patent applications before April 1, 2009. It will be a routine matter for us to reduce the number of claims to a justifiable extent since the restriction proceedings introduced with the EPC 2000 allows for specific, non-mentioned embodiments of the invention to be reincluded after grant of European patent at any time, provided that they fall within the scope of protection by the patent granted. This is why it will no longer be necessary to file numerous sub-claims to account for national peculiarities in case of patent adversary proceedings.

Dr. Andreas Pföstl