Grant Costs: The Final Hurdle to Getting a Patent Registered

Published on 14 November 2016

A patent is said to be “ready for grant” once a National Patent Office is convinced that an applicant has overcome all the objections that were raised in an issued office action (or examination report). At this stage, in some jurisdictions, such as India, a patent certificate is issued, the date of grant is recorded in the official Register, and the details of the granted patent are published in the Patents Journal. On the other hand, some other jurisdictions, such as the United States, issue a notice of allowance inviting the applicant to pay the official issue (or grant or registration) fees within a certain period of time.

Let us consider a 40-page PCT application (including 15 pages of claims and five pages of drawings) having 15 claims, filed by a large entity, that is to be filed in the National Phase in the top 20 patent jurisdictions* in the world. For the purpose of this analysis, EPO member states have not been considered separately. The total estimated grant costs, which vary from $180 in South Africa to $1,625 in the U.S (Table 1), are inclusive of annuity or renewal fees in China (first annuity), Israel (first six years), Japan and South Korea (first three years), and Mexico (first five years), in addition to the costs of translating the claims into German and French in the European Patent Office.

Out of the 20 jurisdictions, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa do not have any official patent grant fees.

Further, the grant costs are dependent on the number of claims in Japan (fee for each claim), South Korea (fee for each claim), Australia (fee for each claim beyond 20) and Singapore (fee for each claim beyond 25). Likewise, the grant costs are dependent on the number of pages in Ukraine (fee for every two pages beyond 15 pages).

Thus, the total estimated grant costs in the above 20 jurisdictions would amount to $16,080.

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Exchange Rates Used:

1 US Dollar = 1.31 Australian Dollars, 3.21 Brazilian Real, 1.31 Canadian Dollars, 6.73 Chinese Yuan, 0.91 Euros, 3.83 Israeli New Shekels, 66.81 Indian Rupees, 104.21 Japanese Yen, 1,138.04 Korean Won, 334.91 Kazakhstan Tenge, 19.03 Mexican Pesos, 4.21 Malaysian Ringgits, 1.41 NZ Dollars, 62.85 Russian Rubles, 3.76 Riyals, 1.39 Singapore Dollars, 26.15 Ukraine Hryvnia, and 14.35 South African Rands.

*- Top twenty patent jurisdictions taken from WIPO’s World IP Indicators 2015