The Board of Directors of the European Patent Office (EPO) has approved a reduction in several of its official fees related to the filing and exam procedures of European Patent applications as of April 1, 2018.
In previous years, the EPO increased its official fees in line with inflation. However, this year it has decided to modify this criterion.
The main measures are the following: the adjustment of the biennial tax based on inflation for 2018-2020 is not applied, the PCT search and exam fees are reduced by 100 euros each, the existing discount in the fees for the European exam for applications already examined by the EPO in the PCT System procedures increases from 50% to 75%, and maintenance fees are not increased.
The EPO estimates that the combined effect of all these reductions will allow European patent applicants to save 25 million euros only in 2018.
For more information on the EPO fees, please refer to http://www.epo.org/applying/forms-fees/fees.html.
