New Patent Fees Coming

The US Patent and Trademark Office issued a proposed fee adjustment today. The large-entity fees are going up.

That, of course, impacts the small- and micro-entity fees, since those fees are expressed as a percentage of the large-entity fees (50% reduction for small entities, 75% reduction for micro entities). The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking won’t be officially published until Monday, 3 October, but the unofficial version is available now. The increases (and, of course, the fee adjustments are mostly increases) aren’t big, but they are there. It’s important for the patent applicant to be aware of them.