IP Australia is changing some of their fees to ensure that they continue to recover costs from administering intellectual property rights and their associated legislation. Most of the changes to the fees will commence from 12am AEDT, 1 October 2020. A list of the fee changes can be viewed here.
Of interest to patent applicants, IP Australia has abolished the current excess claim fee of $110 for each additional claim over 20 and instead replaced it with a stepped fee structure of $125 for every claim over 20 claims but less than or equal to 30 claims, and $250 for every claim over 30 claims—encouraging applicants to have less than 30 claims.
However, the fee for requesting examination of a standard patent remains unchanged at $490 and still includes examination of any number of claims.
As expected from its draft Cost Recovery Implementation Statement, patent renewal fees have also been restructured such that they rise each year at an increasing rate rather than the current stepped fee arrangement.
Other changes include a significant reduction in the fee for a preliminary search and opinion from $2200 to $950; and, a general increase in fees for filing applications by ‘another means’ (i.e. other than online), which aims to streamline workflow and improve efficiency.
If you’d like more information on these changes, please contact Adam Pepper.
