News

The recent topics about the Japan Patent Office

1. The fee deferral for patent examination requests will end on March 31, 2012.

The JPO announced that the fee deferral for a request for examination of patent applications, which was originally planned to be in effect for three years from April 1, 2009, will end on March 31, 2012. As a provisional measure in response to the rapid economic downturn, since April of 2009, the JPO has introduced the one-year grace period for paying the official fee for a request for examination, which normally must be paid upon filing a request for examination.

On the other hand, in order to encourage research and development and innovation by the patent system users, and to support enhancement of industrial competitiveness of Japan by taking advantages of intellectual property, on August 1, 2011, the JPO reduced a fee for a request for examination of patent applications from the current JP 200,000yen on average to about JP 150,000yen, by about 50,000yen (about 25% reduction).

The JPO further announced that revision of official fees, such as reduction of a registration (annual) fee of a design patent, would be in effect from April 1, 2012.

In light of these fee reductions, the JPO decided to end the fee deferral for a request for examination of a patent application on March 31, 2012.

The request for examination fee must therefore be paid at the time of filing a request on or after April 1, 2012.

2. The official fee for patent examination requests was reduced as of August 1, 2011

As described above, the official fee for a request for examination of a patent application was reduced from the current approximately 200,000yen to 150,000yen (about 25% reduction). The current fee schedule for a request for examination filed on or after August 1, 2011 is as follows:

Excerpt of Current and Previous Fee Schedules for Request for Examination
	Current Fee	Previous Fee
Application via Paris Route	118,000yen+4,000yen per claim	168,600yen+4,000yen per claim
Application in PCT Japan National Phase	106,000yen+3,600yen per claim	151,700yen+3,600yen per claim

3. The official registration (annual) fee of design applications will be reduced on or after April 1, 2012

As described above, on or after April 1, 2012, the official registration (annual) fee for a design patent will be reduced after 11th year.

Fee Schedule after April 1, 2012

	After Revision	Before Revision
Every Year from 11th Year to 20th Year	16,900yen	33,800yen