Patent Office lowers fees for unitary patent

The European Patent Office has voted to lower its proposed fees for the planned European-wide unitary patent.

The adopted ‘True Top 4’ proposal means that fees paid by the 25 participating EU countries in the unitary patent, will correspond to the total sum of fees paid currently by Germany, France, the UK and the Netherlands – the countries who currently have the most approved patents.

This represents an initial cost saving of €2,440 per patent, compared to the original proposals presented to the EPO, according to an intellectual property blogger IPKat. The originally proposed fees were criticised for being too high, especially for smaller businesses.