Increase in patent fees in Russia

From October 5, 2024, the amount of patent fees collected in Russia has increased in accordance with the relevant draft government resolution. The changes will affect legally significant actions related to such intellectual property items as inventions, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, and regional brands. Most recently, the fees for registering these items were significantly revised in 2017.

In addition, applicants will no longer be provided with a discount on patent fees when applying to Rospatent electronically. The 30% discount was introduced in 2017 as an interim measure and was intended to encourage applicants to use electronic document exchange with Rospatent. This goal was successfully achieved and, today, more than 80% of applications for intellectual property items are filed using electronic services, and additional incentives are no longer needed.

The cancellation of the above discount was an expected governmental action since this interim incentive procedure for attracting citizens to electronic document management has already been practiced in other sectors of the economy and social spheres of the country, where such a discount was also canceled after achieving the required indicators.

With regard to the size of the new fees, then on average, the increase will be from 25 to 57% depending on the legal action (in some cases, the percentage may be higher). For convenience, below is a comparative table and diagram of official fees for the examination and registration of intellectual property items, provided that the applicant does not have any benefits.

Whereas previously, annual fees for maintaining a patent for an invention or utility model were paid for each year of effect of such a patent, now it will be necessary to pay the fee for five years at once, starting from the sixth year of effect. The amount of the annual patent maintenance fee for an invention, utility model, and industrial design will increase to 30%.

The fee for issuing a paper certificate will increase from 1,400 RUB to 3,000 RUB. This is also due to the trend of reducing paper document flow. It is worth considering that the presence of a paper certificate does not give the right holder any advantages since they always have access to the open registers of Rospatent, as well as to the electronic certificate in .pdf format.

Rospatent notes that fees in Russia are significantly lower than in other countries. For example, in Kazakhstan, the receipt of applications for registration of an invention is 12% more expensive, and conducting an examination is 160% more expensive. In China, the costs of registering intellectual rights are 3 to 9 times higher than in Russia, and, in the USA, they are 8.5 to nearly 10 times higher. A similar situation is in the European Union: fees are 58 times higher for legal entities and 167 times higher for small and medium-sized businesses.

In our opinion, in view of active growth in the number of applications for inventions, utility models, industrial designs, and trademarks over several years in Russia, an increase in patent fees will not in any way affect the patent activity in the country.

Thus, in January and February 2024, the volume of applications for registration of patents for inventions and utility models increased by 2% and 67%, respectively, compared to the same period last year. The energy and mechanical engineering sectors were the leaders in growth. In the first half of this year, Russians filed more than 3,000 design applications with Rospatent, which is 21% more than in 2023 and 73.4% higher than in 2022. Over the two months of this year, domestic entrepreneurs filed more than 19,500 applications for registration of trademarks, which is almost 45% higher than the same figure in 2023. Then, 13,500 applications were registered. Compared to the beginning of 2022, the increase was 75.4%.

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