EPO fees: proposals for certain fee reductions
Since 2012 the EPO has frozen some of its official fees and additionally not increased them to account for inflation. At the end of October 2017, and following a drive by the EPO to increase efficiency, further proposals were put forward by the EPO management to reduce particular official fees.
These proposals were as follows:
- Reduce each of the PCT search fee and examination fee by EUR 100 to EUR 1,775 and EUR 1,830 respectively.
- Increase the discount from 50% to 75% for European examination fees for files already examined by the EPO in PCT proceedings.
- This will mean any applicants using the EPO as the international searching authority for search and examination and entering the European regional phase will benefit from a fee saving of EUR 656 compared to the current situation.
- Not apply the inflation-based biennial fee adjustment for 2018-2020.
Further plans exist to extend the agreement to provide additional reductions for certain applicants such as SMEs and universities and also to propose cheaper national search reports with written opinions to specific member states that outsource search work to the EPO.
Finally, the EPO intend to waive the EUR 130 transmittal fee charged by the EPO as receiving office for applicants filing in Microsoft Word (.docx) format.
All of these proposals are subject to approval by the organisation’s member states in December 2017.