Renewal fee payment service

Our in-house renewal/annuity fee payment service. Our renewal fee department has over 30 years’ experience in paying renewal fees at the EPO, UKIPO, USPTO and other foreign intellectual property offices. Since 2003 we have paid over 150,000 renewal fees for our clients.

We are able to pay renewal fees for our clients’ patents, designs and trade marks (including pending applications).  Where possible we pay fees directly to the patent office concerned enabling us to offer an efficient and low cost service.  We offer discounted rates without the requirement for payment in advance for clients who build up a good credit history with us.

We have developed, over many years, our own bespoke computer system which monitors renewal fee deadlines, issues reminders where appropriate and records payments made.

Schedule Service

We offer a schedule service for payment of patent, design and trade mark renewal fees.  This not only provides a convenient way for you to instruct renewal payment but allows you to take advantage of our discounted charges.  The service is normally operated as follows but variations in the following procedure are possible and can be discussed if required.

• Renewals are dealt with in quarterly blocks i.e. all the renewals falling due in a three month period will be, at least from your point of view, handled simultaneously.
• We issue to you a quarterly list about three months before the earliest renewal date on the list.  This list identifies all renewals due in the quarter in question and gives you a price for each.
• You return the list annotated with your complete instructions for the whole list, by a date not later than six weeks before the earliest renewal on the list, and preferably earlier.  For some cases the instruction may be “defer”, and these cases are treated on an individual basis.
• For all renewals which are instructed to be paid by returning the list, a single invoice is immediately sent to you, to be paid within one month (i.e. before we start paying the renewal fees).
• After receipt of payment, we then pay the renewals in due time and send you the receipts, in as few batches as possible.
• The prices given in the quarterly list are our discounted charge and this is what you would normally pay. We will not credit/debit any small fluctuations on a single item (this is so we can avoid sending you lots of extra credit/debit notes for small amounts). However, we may credit you or bill you an additional amount in the case of:

a)    severe currency swings;
b)    mistaken quotation;
c)    unexpected official fees or overseas agent fee changes;
d)   additional unforeseen work and also costs in recording for example change of address,

If you require any further information or are interested in this service, please let us know.

This information is simplified and must not be taken as a definitive statement of the law or practice.