Posts Tagged: "patent fees"

India Amends Patent Rules and Reduces Fees by 80% for Educational Institutions

On September 21, 2021, India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry published amended Patents Rules, 2021, to amend the 2003 Patents Rules. The amendment now includes a new category, “eligible educational institutions,” which qualifies for the same reduced fees as natural persons, startups, and small entities. This means any “eligible educational institution” will pay 80% reduced fees for the entire patent filing and prosecution, thereby hopefully incentivizing those institutions to apply for more patents, and bringing India a step closer to becoming a global player in patent filings.

Ready for 2021?  Beware Non-Use of Your Trademarks in 2020

Some businesses, as a result of the pandemic, have been pressed to discontinue manufacture or sale of products or have otherwise limited the scope of their business activities. As a result, in 2020 the use of one or more of the trademarks owned by your business may have stopped. Under U.S. trademark law, in the fifth year of a trademark registration term, and every ten years thereafter, a post-registration maintenance filing at the USPTO is required (e.g., evidence and a sworn statement about continuous trademark use in U.S. commerce). If sustained discontinuity of trademark use has occurred what options are available to keep a trademark registration active?

Saving money by slashing patent attorney fees wastes every dollar

You get what you pay for, and C-level executives that play the role of bean-counter and only see that they are saving money today without any consideration of the damage they are doing long-term to their patent portfolios will wind up doing real, lasting and severe damage to their corporations. It is just that simple. The Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have simply created too many impediments to obtaining and keeping a patent to justify the expense of spending any part of a budget on anything other than a patent that is done properly. So, you might think you are saving money by slashing patent attorneys fees yet again this year, but what you are doing is wasting every dollar you spend.

The Real Genius of the Founders: Making America’s Patent Fees Affordable

The original patent law passed by Congress on April 10, 1790 deliberately set patent fees to a level any ordinary citizen could afford — initially $3.70, but three years later raised to $30. This was still less than 5 percent of the rate in Britain. Patent fees remained $30 for the next seventy years, ensuring that virtually any citizen could participate in the industrial revolution.

USPTO Increases IPR Filing Fees by $6,500 in Final Rule on Fee Adjustments

The USPTO issued a final rule to set or adjust certain patent fees as the agency is authorized to do under the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011. The fee increases, which include some significant increases to petitioners filing for inter partes review (IPR) proceedings, are ostensibly meant to cover costs for USPTO operations, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operations and administrative services as the USPTO attempts to achieve strategic goals including backlog reductions and “patent quality enhancements.”… The OMB’s determination of the new fees as a “transfer payment” means that the rule isn’t subject to the requirements of Executive Order 13771, titled Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs and signed on January 30th of this year.