Changes To The Practice Of The Payment Of Acceptance Fees By IPAustralia
As of 1 October 2010, IP Australia has amended their practice so that any claims added after the application has been accepted will attract an official fee of $100 per claim where the claim set is in excess of 20 claims. Essentially, the loop hole of reinserting claims after acceptance in order to avoid excess claim fees has now been closed.
In light of these changes, we recommend adopting the following strategy:
Filing a Request to Postpone Acceptance to avoid early or inadvertent acceptance of the application. We recommend filing the Request to Postpone Acceptance at the time of filing a Request for Examination. Filing a Request to Postpone Acceptance is particularly important where the application includes a large claim set.
After the examination report has issued and before the application is accepted, amending the claim using multiple dependencies to reduce the number of claims in the claim set.
Withdrawing the Request to Postpone Acceptance when the application is in order for acceptance and the applicant agrees with the claims and the number of claims to be accepted.
