Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees During Fiscal Year 2025

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Patent and Trademark Office</SUBAGY> <CFR>37 CFR Parts 1, 41, and 42</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PTO-P-2022-0033]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0651-AD64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees During Fiscal Year 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> United States Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sets or adjusts patent fees as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), as amended by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success Act of 2018 (SUCCESS Act). The fee adjustments are needed to provide the USPTO with sufficient aggregate revenue to recover the aggregate estimated costs of patent operations in future years (based on assumptions and estimates found in the agency's Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Justification (FY 2025 Budget)), including implementing the USPTO 2022-2026 Strategic Plan (Strategic Plan). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on January 19, 2025. The amendments to § 1.18(b)(1) shall apply to those international design applications under the Hague Agreement having a date of international registration on or after January 19, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brendan Hourigan, Director, Office of Planning and Budget, at 571-272-8966 or <E T="03">Brendan.Hourigan@uspto.gov</E> or C. Brett Lockard, Director, Forecasting and Analysis Division, at 571-272-0928 or <E T="03">Christopher.Lockard@uspto.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Introduction</HD> The USPTO issues this final rule under section 10 of the AIA (section 10), Public Law 112-29, 125 Stat. 284, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ29/PLAW-112publ29.pdf,</E> as amended by the SUCCESS Act, Public Law 115-273, 132 Stat. 4158, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ273/PLAW-115publ273.pdf,</E> which authorizes the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO (Director) to set or adjust by rule any patent fee established, authorized, or charged under 35 U.S.C. for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. Section 10 prescribes that fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to patents, including administrative costs with respect to such patent fees. Section 10 authority includes flexibility to set individual fees in a way that furthers key policy factors while considering the cost of the respective services. Section 10 also establishes certain procedural requirements for setting or adjusting fee regulations, such as public hearings and input from the Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC), a public comment period, and congressional oversight. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Purpose of This Action</HD> Based on a biennial review of fees, costs, and revenues that began in fiscal year (FY) 2021, the USPTO concluded that fee adjustments are necessary to provide the agency with sufficient financial resources to facilitate the effective administration of the U.S. patent system, including implementing the Strategic Plan, available on the agency website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/StrategicPlan.</E> The USPTO reviewed and analyzed the overall balance between the agency's estimated revenue and costs over the next five years (based on current projections) under this rule. The fees established under this final rule will help stabilize the USPTO's finances by offsetting the forecasted increase in aggregate costs and maintaining the patent operating reserve in the desired range. The patent operating reserve mitigates financing risk and enables the agency to deliver reliable and predictable service levels, while positioning it to undertake initiatives that encourage participation in the innovation ecosystem. The individual fee adjustments align with the USPTO's strategic goals and its fee structure philosophy, including the agency's four key fee setting policy factors discussed in detail in Part IV: Rulemaking Goals and Strategies of this rule: (1) promote innovation strategies, (2) align fees with the full costs of products and services, (3) facilitate effective administration of the U.S. patent system, and (4) offer application processing options. The fee adjustments in this final rule will enable the USPTO to accomplish its mission to drive U.S. innovation, inclusive capitalism, and global competitiveness. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of Provisions Impacted by This Action</HD> This final rule sets or adjusts 433 patent fees for undiscounted, small, and micro entities, including the introduction of 52 new fees. Any reference herein to “undiscounted entity” includes all entities other than those with established entitlement to either a small or micro entity fee discount, see Part II: Background of this rule for more information. Overall, discussed in detail below, the routine fees to obtain a patent ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> filing, search, examination, and issue fees) will increase under this final rule relative to the current fee schedule to ensure financial sustainability and accommodate increases needed to improve the predictability and reliability of patent intellectual property (IP) protection. Applicants who meet the eligibility criteria for small or micro entity discounts will continue to pay a reduced fee for the fees eligible for discount under AIA section 10(b). Additional information describing the fee adjustments established by this final rule is included in Part V: Individual Fee Rationale in this rulemaking and in the “Table of Patent Fees—Current, Final Patent Fee Schedule, and Unit Cost” (Table of Patent Fees) available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Summary of Costs and Benefits of This Action</HD> This final rule is 3(f)(1) significant and requires a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) under Executive Order (E.O.) 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review, (Sept. 30, 1993). The USPTO prepared an RIA to analyze the costs and benefits of the final rule over a five-year period, FY 2025-29. The RIA includes an analysis of how well the four alternatives align with the rulemaking strategies and goals, which are comprised of strategic priorities (goals, objectives, and key performance strategies) from the Strategic Plan and fee setting policy factors. From this conceptual framework, the USPTO assessed the absolute and relative qualitative costs and benefits of each alternative. Consistent with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis” (see 88 FR 77615, Nov. 13, 2023), this final rule involves a transfer payment from one group to another. The USPTO recognizes that it is very difficult to precisely monetize and quantify social costs and benefits resulting from deadweight loss of a transfer rule such as this final rule. The costs and benefits identified and analyzed in the RIA are strictly qualitative. Qualitative costs and benefits have effects that are difficult to express in either dollar or numerical values. Monetized costs and benefits, on the other hand, have effects that can be expressed in dollar values. The USPTO did not identify any monetized costs and benefits of this final rule but found this final rule has significant qualitative benefits and only minimal costs. The RIA assesses the qualitative costs and benefits with respect to fee schedule design—how well the fee schedule aligns to the key fee setting policy factors—and securing aggregate revenue to recover aggregate cost—whether the alternative provides adequate revenue to support the core mission and strategic priorities described in the final rule, Strategic Plan, and FY 2025 Budget. Based on the costs and benefits identified and analyzed in the RIA, the fee schedule detailed in this final rule offers the highest net benefits. As described throughout this document, the final fee schedule maintains the existing balance of below cost entry fees ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> filing, search, and examination) and above cost maintenance fees as one approach to foster innovation. Further, as detailed in Part V: Individual Fee Rationale of this rule, the fee changes are targeted in support of one or more fee setting policy factors. Lastly, this final rule secures the aggregate revenue needed to maintain patent operations and achieve the strategic priorities encompassed in the rulemaking goals and strategies (see Part IV: Rulemaking Goals and Strategies of this rule). The final fee schedule produces sufficient aggregate revenue to fund the strategic objectives to issue and maintain robust and reliable patents, improve patent application pendency, optimize the patent application process to enable efficiencies for applicants and other stakeholders, and enhance internal processes to prevent fraudulent and abusive behaviors that do not embody the USPTO's mission. Table 1 summarizes the RIA results. Additional details describing the costs and benefits can be found in the RIA, available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="168"> <GID>ER20NO24.000</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> Section 10(a) of the AIA authorizes the Director to set or adjust by rule any patent fee established, authorized, or charged under 35 U.S.C. for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. Fees under 35 U.S.C. may be set or adjusted only to recover the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 442k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━