The USPTO has proposed several fee changes for implementation in 2025. If implemented, these changes will increase filing fees for Inter Partes Reviews (IPRs) and Post Grant Reviews (PGRs) by 25% “to improve cost recovery.” Additionally, the PTO is proposing to allow IPR and PGR petitions to exceed the current word limits (14,000 and 18,700, respectively) via a new fee structure. The goal behind this new approach is to reduce the number of parallel petitions being filed by increasing the allowed word counts. The proposal suggests 50% and 100% increases in word counts for payment of additional fees equal to 50% and 100% of the initial filing fees. Fees incurred for additional words post-institution would be higher than those levied pre-institution.
For example, pre-institution:
- IPR requests for up to 20 claims and 14,000 words would be $23,750. Up to 7,000 additional words would cost an additional $11,875 and up to 14,000 additional words would incur an additional fee of $23,750.
- PGR requests for up to 20 claims and 18,700 words would be $25,000. Up to 9,350 additional words would cost an additional $12,500 and up to 18,700 additional words would incur an additional fee of $25,000.
The USPTO is also proposing a new fee of $440 for any party requesting review of a PTAB decision by the director, post-Arthrex. This fee is set to match that of the Petitions to the Chief Administrative Judge Fee.
Anyone wishing to submit written comments on the proposed changes should visit the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. To submit comments via the portal, commenters should enter docket number PTO–P–2023–0017 on the homepage.