New Patent-Related Official Fees Implemented in 2010.

The TIPO has promoted various revolutionary changes to patent examination regime in recent years, including examination on a claim-by-claim basis, a prior notice on cause(s) of rejection before issuance of a rejection, and effective interview mechanism. Now, the TIPO revises the provisions governing substantive examination fee collection for invention patent applications based on the “user-pays” idea to reasonably reflect the increasing costs incurred in patent examination.

Additionally, under the current Patent Act, annuity for invention, utility model, and design patent are collected under the same standard.  TIPO has revised the provisions with respect to patent fees to make patent application charges more reasonable.

The key points of this amendment is summarized as follows:

1.　Examination fee of an invention patent application is to be calculated based on the number of claims.  The new fee scheme operates on invention patent applications filed from January 1, 2010, under which the examination fees thereof should be calculated and collected in accordance with the number of claims to be examined at the time when the request for substantive examination is made.  A basic fee of NTD7,000 for up to 10 claims and an additional NTD800 for each claim in excess of 10 will be charged for invention patent applications.  Examination fee calculated in accordance with the page number of specification and drawings should remain applicable (Article 2 of the Regulations of Patent Fees).

2.　Applicants may, under specific conditions, withdraw a patent application and seek full refund of examination fee.  This is to urge applicants to reconsider the necessity of every patent application and to avoid examination on those applications for which the applicants see no commercial values (Article 2-1 of the Regulations of Patent Fees).

3.　Annuities for invention, utility model, and design patent for maintaining a granted patent in force are significantly reduced as indicated in the chart below (Article 7 of the Regulations of Patent Fees).

4.　The new examination fee mechanism takes immediate effect on patent applications filed and divisional applications effected on and after January 1st, 2010.  It is also applicable to those invention patent applications which were originally filed for utility model patents on and from January 1, 2010 (Article 11-1 of the Regulations of Patent Fees).

Comparison Chart for Patent Fee Change
Fees	Current Standard	New Standard
For substantive examination	A basic fee of NT$8,000 is charged for request for substantive examination of an application (where the specification and drawings does not exceed 50 pages)	A basic fee of NT$7,000 is charged for up to 10 items, and an additional NT$800 for each item in excess of 10.
Annuity	1st ~ 3rd Year:　NTD2,500 / per year 4th ~ 6th Year:　NTD5,000 / per year 7th ~ 9th Year:　NTD9,000 / per year 10th year and more: NTD18,000 /per year	Invention Patent	1st ~ 3rd Year and 4th ~ 6th Year	Same with the original standard
			7th ~ 9th year	NTD8,000 / per year
			10th year and more	NTD16,000 / per year
		Utility Model Patent	1st ~ 3rd year	NTD2,500 per year
			4th ~ 6th year	NTD4,000 per year
			7th year and up	NTD8,000 per year
		Design Patent	1st ~ 3rd year	NTD2,500 per year
			4th ~ 6th year	NTD3,500 per year
			7th year and more	NTD5,000 per year
Source:　Regulations of Patent Fees

(2009.12)
/CCS