On December 14, 2007 the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office issued a decision adjusting the Office fees to be applied from April 1°, 2008, and further changes have been already planned for 2009. Generally, all the fees were increased of about 5-10%, with at least two remarkable exceptions: the claim fee and the renewal fees.

Claim fee

Currently, at the filing of a European patent application, a claim fee of € 45,00 is due for the 11th and each subsequent claim. Hence, an exemplary application with 60 claims is subject to a claim fee of (60 - 10) x 45 = € 2.250,00 - in addition to the on-line filing fee (€ 95,00) and the search fee (€ 1.000,00), to an aggregate amount of € 3.345,00. The same claim fee applies at the Entry of a PCT application into the European phase.

Effective from April 1, 2008, the first 15 claims are not subject to the claim fee, but for the 16th and each subsequent claim the fee is increased to € 200,00.

From April 1, 2009, the claim fee for the 51st and each subsequent claim is set to € 500,00

The following table illustrates the effects of such a rise on the overall claim fee:

It is apparent that the increase is very relevant beyond the 30th claim, substantially prohibitive for applications with 50 claims or more. It goes without saying that the above rise mainly affects the chemistry patents and the emerging technologies such as biotech, nanotech etc., and the computer-related patents as well.

Renewal fees

For these fees, the rise is less marked (see the following table), being comprised in a range from 18% to 55%.

but the surcharge for the late payment of a renewal fee with six months after the missing deadline (grace period provided by the EP regulations) will be 50% of the belated renewal fee, instead of 10%, thus multiplying the effects of the above increase.