When filing a European patent application typically either claiming priority from a domestic patent application, such as a UK or USA patent application, or when converting from an International PCT patent application, there are a number or ways which can be used to reduce costs.
The European Patent Office (EPO) charges significant extra fees for each claim of your patent application in excess of 15. Therefore, in effect, the first 15 claims in a European patent application are free of charge, but the following claims from 16 onwards do incur heavy fees. Therefore, it is in the applicant’s interest to consider slimming their claims down when filing their European patent application.
In particular, the official fee at present for each claim from 16-50 is €225, and for each claim from 51 onwards incurs an official fee of €555. In coming years, these fees are unlikely to reduce and if anything will probably only get higher.
It should be remembered that, for a European patent application, typically only one independent apparatus claim, one independent method claim, and one independent product claim will be allowable. Often, US patent applications in particular, will include multiple independent apparatus claims. Therefore, when filing or submitting a European patent application, it is generally prudent to consider reducing the number of independent claims in the respective categories. Again, this should help to reduce the official filing fees.
The European Patent Office also charges for each page of the specification in excess of the first 35 articles. The specification in this case includes the description, claims, abstract and drawings. Although it is often difficult to reduce the number of articles, if the margins can be reduced, the line spacing between lines of written text reduced to 1.5, and typically the font size reduced to Times New Roman 11., this is generally acceptable and may result in the number of articles being reduced somewhat.
Although the saving is not a great as with the reduction in the number claims, each page in excess of the first 35 articles of the specification is charged at €13. Again, although this fee remains static for the time being, it is unlikely that it will ever reduce and it is more probable that it will only ever increase. Therefore, when drafting or preparing the original patent filing, this can be taken into account.
To somewhat reduce ongoing costs during prosecution of a European patent application, some formalities can be taken care of when filing the patent application. In particular, the European Patent Office will require that each feature or element mentioned in the claims and shown in the drawings includes its respective reference numeral enclosed by brackets. By taking account of this and modifying or submitting amended claims when filing, this particular formalities objection can be avoided.
Although of not particular benefit in terms of saving costs, it should also be noted that the abstract of a European patent application should include reference numbers identifying the features of the drawings. And these reference numbers should also be in brackets.
Furthermore, European patent practice provides for the use of multiple dependent claims, therefore if filing from an originating US patent application, for example, there is no reason not to modify the claims so that the dependent claims utilize multiple dependencies if appropriate.