| USPTO releases fee study report to Congress Third-party assessment determines agency's fee-setting structure "potentially superior" to other considered models due to benefits for applicants and patent owners The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently released a report to Congress, as required by the Unleashing American Innovators Act of 2022 (UAIA), assessing the agency's fee structure. The study looked at several areas including the potential impact on small and micro entities, whether fee structure changes are needed, and recommendations for administrative and legislative action. "This study builds on our commitment to ensuring we promote a balanced patent system that benefits all inventors and emphasizes the importance of our fee setting authority in maintaining our high impact services," said Derrick Brent, Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of the USPTO. "We are pleased that the authors evaluated and acknowledged the value of our operations, including outreach and legal assistance programs to ensure independent inventors are fully aware of the many resources and opportunities available to incentivize more innovation from all across our great country." Findings and observations from the study include: - Under the current fee structure, USPTO fees do not inhibit the filing of patent applications by small and micro entities; these filers are more heavily influenced by factors external to the USPTO.
- The USPTO's fee schedule structure, which defers about half of the agency's examination costs to the payment of maintenance fees, does not impact or incentivize examination and patenting decisions.
- The current USPTO fee structure, including the agency's temporary fee setting authority, is potentially superior to other models considered by the study authors because of its benefits for applicants and patentees.
- As an example of the USPTO's effective use of our fee-setting authority, the agency proactively addressed one of the study's conclusions in our latest patent fee rule when we set additional fees for some continuing applications that do not recover examination costs due to them expiring before all maintenance fees come due.
- There is value in providing the USPTO fee setting authority beyond the September 2026 extension included in the SUCCESS Act.
The USPTO commissioned the study of the agency's fee structure, which was conducted by academic economists Gaétan de Rassenfosse of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and Adam B. Jaffe of Brandeis University, and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, New Zealand. In addition, the USPTO created a summary report that provides a high-level overview of the authors' findings. | | | Having trouble accessing links in this email? Your email server security software may be altering the links. Contact your IT or email administrator and ask them to "allow-list" links-1.govdelivery.com and links-2.govdelivery.com to ensure you can access all content in this communication. Stay connected with the USPTO by subscribing to regular email updates. Visit our subscription center at www.uspto.gov/subscribe to update or change your email preferences. This email was sent from an unmonitored mailbox. To contact us, please visit our website www.uspto.gov/about/contacts. To ensure that you continue to receive our news and notices, please modify your email filters to allow mail from subscriptioncenter@subscriptions.uspto.gov. | | | |
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