Patent Attacks Unlikely to Drop Despite 56 Percent Fee Hike

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s upcoming 56 percent increase in the cost of challenging the validity of an existing patent is unlikely to put a dent in filings, practitioners told Bloomberg Law.

Petitioners before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board will have to pay a minimum of $30,500 as of Jan. 16 to initiate inter partes review, the popular proceeding allowing alleged infringers and others to challenge patent claims for being non-novel or obvious at the time of their original examination. That’s $7,500 more than an IPR petition costs under the current fee schedule.

The PTO made the fee ...