|
Overview Of Patent Maintenance Fees
Patent maintenance fees must be paid for the patent to stay valid. There are no patent maintenance fees payable on pending patents and provisional applications. It is not recommended that you file for the permanent patent immediately.
The normal route is to first file a provisional patent application and then do all the changes you want. You will have 12 months from the date in which to complete the permanent patent application.
Since you will not have to pay patent maintenance fees during the time, it will not cost any extra. The provisional patent application has a fee involved, but is cheaper than that of the permanent patent application.
If you thus want to save money in the long run, you will first do the provisional application.
The provisional application will allow you to get the earliest possible filing date. Since you may not publicly disclose any information about the invention prior to the initial filing date, you will want to have the earliest possible filing date to prevent the possibility of information being leaked before you could have filed for a patent application.
The annual patent maintenance fees become payable calculated from the date the patent has been granted.
You may start to pay the patent maintenance fees even before then as the Registrar will accept such. It should be noted that a patent will lapse if the patent maintenance fees are not paid within the allowable period. Should this occur you can request for restoration of the patent by following the correct procedures for such.
As part of our patent application services we also handle the payment of patent maintenance fees on behalf of the client and handle restoration requests on behalf of the client.
Contact our offices today for assistance regarding issues related to patent maintenance fees.
|
