On January 31, 2019, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) officially announced the revisions to the deduction practice regarding the following Official Fees:
- Request for Examination; and
- 1st through 10th Annuities
1. Medium and small Sized Enterprise and Venture Company are eligible for Half or Two-Third Deduction of Official Fees
The revised practice will be applied to a Japanese patent application for which a Request for Examination is filed on or after April 1, 2019.
The most important point for the applicants under the revised practice is that the procedure for the reduction will be drastically simplified. Please note that, under the revised practice, it is basically not required to submit any certificate before the JPO.
We hereby provide you with two eligible examples regarding the revised deduction practice.
[Example 1]
Medium and Small Sized Enterprise:
If the following conditions are satisfied, Half of the Official Fees can be deducted.
- Limited payroll number or capital amount; and
- Not controlled by large enterprise
Condition (a) depends on the category of business of the enterprise. For example, in the case of a manufacturing industry, this condition will be satisfied if the payroll number is 300 or less or the enterprise is capitalized at JPY 300,000,000 or less.
Condition (b) will be satisfied when i) a single large enterprise does not own over half of stock shares or did not invest over half of the capital; and ii) plural large enterprises do not own over two-thirds of stock shares or did not invest over two-thirds of the capital.
[Example 2]
Medium and Small Sized Venture Company:
If the following conditions are satisfied, Two-Thirds of the Official Fees can be deducted.
- Established within 10 years and capitalized at JPY 300,000,000 or less; and
- Not controlled by large enterprise
As to condition (b), please refer to the comments above regarding [Example 1].
2. Individuals, who engage in personal business, are eligible for Half or Two-Third Deduction of Official Fees
For individual applicants, if he/she is a sole proprietor and satisfy the similar limitations (payroll number being 20 or less; established within 10 years; etc.), it is possible to file a request for Half or Two-Thirds deduction of Official Fees without submitting any certificate before the JPO.
3. Universities are eligible for Half Deduction of Official Fees
University applicants are basically eligible for Half deduction of Official Fees without submitting any certificate before the JPO.
4. Practice
In order to check if the present applicant would be eligible for the deduction, we ask our clients to provide us with applicant’s information, such as payroll number, capital amount, and years since establishment.
Upon request, if eligible, we file a request for examination together with a request for deduction.
If you wish to have more details regarding applicable conditions, deduction amounts, etc., please contact us at info@allegropat.com.
P. S.
On June 17, 2019, the Japan Patent Office published an English leaflet regarding the new patent fee reduction/exemption program.