7 stages of calculating patent registration cost in India

Every researcher or entrepreneur has a question that how much will it cost to get a patent in India and other countries? Patent registration cost is approximately Rs. 6,000 – Rs 45,000.The answer is not a single figure, because, it is important to know about below mentioned stages regarding cost of patenting procedure in India. We will exclude costs of paper, printing etc. i.e. excluded smaller expenses. हिंदी में

• Decide on patent applicant(s)
• Patent Drafting cost (most important and 90+% of total cost)
• Mode of filing a patent application in Patent Office
• Fees of the Patent Office upto grant of a patent
• Number of pages and claims in the patent application
• Expedited patenting procedure or normal   
• Fees after the grant of patent

Now, we will explore all these stages in detail to come up with approximate cost of getting a patent in India.

Stage 1. Decide on patent applicant(s)

Here Applicant means, those who will get rights of the patent when it will be granted in India. And more importantly, these applicants can be different from the actual inventors of the invention. Indian patent office has made a differentiation in forms and fees according to the type of the patent applicant, so it’s mandatory to choose at the time of patent application. Your patent registration cost in India may vary vastly depending upon your choice below. You can choose one of the options mentioned below, which better describes you as an applicant.

• Natural Person(s)
• Startup
• Small Entity
• Others (Businesses other than startup and small entity)

Stage 2. Determine the Patent Drafting Cost

Patent is a techno-legal document. You have to write patent specifications in such way that you will get broader rights for your invention. There are two cost factors here. These may not be tagged as direct patent registration cost in India, but may be called indirect costs. 

Novelty Search (Patentability Search)

Before writing a patent application, it important to check, if your invention is novel. For this, for example, you have to search related patents those were already filed in India and other countries, it’s called a prior art search. The Prior Art Search include searching in; patent databases of all countries, scientific journals, general internet content(news, forums, online communities, etc.) published anywhere in the world and in any format(print, multimedia, etc). This novelty search can be done on the internet along with some knowledge, training and right type of tools, softwares etc.  

• You have knowledge and can do a patent search  – Rs 0 /-
• Professional searcher or through patent agent – Rs 4,000/- to Rs 15,000/-

Patent Drafting Fees in India

Patent office in India expects a patent application to be drafted in predetermined format, so it must be carefully drafted. In patent draft there are sections such as title of the invention, field of invention, drawbacks associated with the prior art, embodiments of the invention, patent drawings, claims, etc and they must be written in detail. Unsurprisingly, whoever prepares this patent draft should be familiar with the Indian Patent Law(act and rules) as well as the invention itself.  This is hard part of the patenting procedure. If you, as an inventor try and make some serious effort, you can draft patent quite well. If you don’t want to draft it yourself, you can hire a patent agent in india. Patent agents in india take fees according to your invention and filing requirements.

• Draft it Yourself- Rs 0 /-
• Drafted by Patent Agent in India  – Rs 7,000 /- to Rs 30,000 /-  

Stage 3. Mode of filing a patent application in Patent Office

You can submit/file your drafted patent application at Indian patent Office by two major ways, Online or Offline. The option affects patent registration cost as well as cost after grant of a patent.

Also, there are two ways of filing an Offline patent application. One is, by visiting patent office in your region and other is, by sending the patent application by Speed Post of the India Post service to the patent office. In case of an offline patent application you need to print it on a paper; so cost of the paper, cost of postage and cost of travelling, needs to be taken into account.

If you are filing an online patent application through the website of Indian patent office, you need to have a class 3 digital signature. If you have drafted the patent application yourself and going to file it online through a patent agent, then the patent agent uses his own digital signature, in that case you are exempted from enrolling for the digital signature. As the name suggests, digital signature signs patent documents online and you don’t have to sign it manually. Digital signatures are provided by various companies in India and cost is little more than Rs. 2,000 and you have to renew it annually by paying renewal fees.   

• Offline filing of the patent application
  • By visiting Patent Office yourself – Rs 0 /-
  • By Speed Post service – more than Rs 40 /-
• Online filing of the patent application
  • You file online – more than Rs 2,000 /- yearly
  • Patent Agent files with your permission – Less than Rs 2,000 /-

Stage 4. Fees of the Patent Office up to grant of a patent

Even if you can file your patent application online or offline, you have to pay application fees to the Indian patent office. You will pay these fees according to the status and stage of your patent application. Patent office have differential fees for forms according to the stage, type and time of the patent application. These are direct costs for calculating patent registration cost in India and must be payed in time as per status of the patent application. 

 

	Status
		Natural person(s) and/ or Startup	Others		Remark
			Small entity	Other
1	Application for grant of patent	1,600 (Online) 1,750 (Offline)	4,000 (Online) 4,400 (Offline)	8,000 (Online) 8,800 (Offline)	Mandatory
2	Examination of patent application	4,000 (Online) 4,400 (Offline)	10,000 (Online) 11,000 (Offline)	20,000 (Online) 22,000 (Offline)	Mandatory

Table is much longer with more fees, you can find it complete on the Indian patent office website here Forms and Fees. These are only exemplary initial fees. You don’t have to pay all the fees immediately, it’s to be paid in stages as per the progress of the patent application.

Above table can be summarised in total expenditure as –

Patent registration cost up to grant of the patent –

• Natural person(s) and/or startups –Rs 5,600 /- to 6,150 /-
• Small entity- Rs 14,000 /- to 15,400 /-
• Others(except small entity) Rs 28,000 /- to 30,800 /-

Stage 5. Number of pages and claims in the patent application affecting patent registration cost

If specifications of your invention in patent application goes over 30 pages, then you have to pay extra fees on every page or sheet exceeding over the page count of 30. Similarly, you also have to pay for each claim in excess of the total claim count of 10. If your specifications of the invention don’t exceed above mentioned limits, then you can get away with normal fees. Still, you can write for getting a broader protection for the invention with claims more than 10 and explain your complicated invention exceeding of 30 pages or sheets. Fees are mentioned in the table below.

That’s why, we cannot determine exact patent registration cost.

 

	Status
		Natural person(s) and/ or Startup	Others		Remark
			Small entity	Other
1	For each sheet of specification in addition to 30	160/sheet (Online) 180/sheet (Offline)	400/sheet (Online) 440/sheet (Offline)	800/sheet (Online) 880/sheet (Offline)	Mandatory
2	For each claim in addition to 10	320/claim (Online) 350/claim (Offline)	800/claim (Online) 880/claim (Offline)	1,600/claim (Online) 1,750/claim (Offline)	Mandatory

Stage 6. Expedited patenting procedure or normal

Every patent application filed in the Indian patent office is examined thoroughly and carefully. It’s time consuming process, because every year almost 40,000-50,000 patent are filed in India. If you want to publish or examine your patent application with normal timeline of the patent office, it will take lot of months. If you want to reduce this time and ready to pay extra fees, you can speed up the patent application procedure in India.    

Early Publication Fees – 

See table below

	Status
		Natural person(s) and/ or Startup	Others		Remark
			Small entity	Other
1	Fee for Requesting early publication	2,500 (Online) 2,750 (Offline)	6,250 (Online) 6,900 (Offline)	12,500 (Online) 13,750 (Offline)	Optional

Expedited Examination of Patent application –

(This expedited examination request can be only filed by online procedure through web portal of Indian Patent Office)

This will reduce the examination to happen within few months from such request.

• Natural Person(s) – Can’t request
• Startups –Rs 8,000 /-
• Small Entity- Rs 25,000 /-
• Others – Rs 60,000 /-

Stage 7. Fees after the grant of patent

You have to pay annual fees, in stages, to keep patent protected as many years you want up to 20 years. Patent Office in India give rights to patent owner(patentee) up to 20 years from the priority date of the patent application. These renewal fees will be less for the first few years, then they gradually increases as the patent get older. Details of these renewal fees can be found the Indian Patent Office website under the first schedule.   Though, we cannot directly add these costs in patent registration cost, still it’s good to know them beforehand.

• Natural person(s) and/or startups –Rs 800 /- to 8,800 /- (yearly)
• Small Entity- Rs 2,000 /- to 22,000 /- (yearly)
• Others- Rs 4,000 /- to 44,000 /- (yearly)

Total Patent Registration Cost – Conclusion

• You do all patenting procedure by yourself – Rs 6,000 to 9,000 /-
• Help of the Registered Patent Agent in India – Rs 11,000 to 45,000 /-

(add following if necessary)

Patent Renewal fees after the grant of the patent

For some kind of businesses or organisations patent registration cost in India may go upward of Rs. 1 Lakh.