The Trade Mark and Patent Registries of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has announced a series of fee revisions that will take effect from 1 April 2017. In summary, there are significant fee reductions for patent search and examination fees and trade mark filing fees after 1 April 2017. Therefore if applicants intend to use search and examination options, they should delay making these requests until after 1 April 2017.
However, there will be a considerable increase in the official fees for the renewal and maintenance of granted patents and registered trade marks from 1 April 2017. This has been marketed as a means of discouraging the hoarding of registered IP rights, in order to objectively minimise the potential stifling of innovation. Nonetheless, although the relevant official fees will rise, proprietors of granted patents who have registered to licence their granted patents as of right will enjoy a 50% discount off the official fees for renewals. Therefore any renewals should be done before 1 April 2017, if possible.
Further details on the fee changes may be found below.
PATENTS
Reduction in patent examination fees
The changes at the Patent Registry are headlined by a 25% fee reduction for each request for a search and examination report, and a 14% fee reduction to request for either a search report or a supplementary search report. There will also be a further discount on the official fee to request for a search and examination report in situations where a report under the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) has already been established by IPOS acting either as the International Searching Authority (ISA) or the International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA), for patent applications entering national phase into Singapore.
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