The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) is allowing inventors to file a provisional patent application without paying the government fee usually required at time of filing, for COVID-19 related inventions. The patent application fee is deferred, but must be paid later within 12 months, if and when you decide to follow-up with filing a full non-provisional patent application.
If you need a refresher on how provisional patent applications work, read Understanding Provisional Patent Applications.
The government fee to file a provisional patent application is currently either $70, $140, or $280, depending on your income and the size of your company. USPTO is allowing you to defer paying this fee, so long as your invention is related to COVID-19. This fee is not waived, and must be paid later when you decide to file the non-provisional patent application, before the provisional patent application expires 12 months after its filing.
To qualify for deferral of the provisional application fee:
- Your invention must be a product or process related to COVID-19.
- Your invention must require Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to be used, whether the approval is already obtained, pending, or will be obtained eventually.
- You agree to have your provisional patent application immediately published for the public to view on the USPTO website.
Note that your provisional application content will be immediately made public for the world to view. The thought is that your invention can immediately contribute to the fight against COVID-19, by allowing the world to see your invention, potentially use it with your permission, and for the world to potentially make improvements to your invention to make new even better inventions to fight against COVID-19.
The USPTO will review all requests for deferral of the provisional patent application fee, and has the right to request the fee if it does not believe the invention meets the criteria fee deferment. This special program is currently set to run through September 17, 2021.
If you have an invention that qualifies for a deferred fee provisional patent application, you must make proper request to qualify for the fee deferment program at the time of filing your provisional patent application. A request for fee deferment after filing of the provisional patent application is not allowed.
Please contact us to assist you in applying for this program and to file your provisional patent application. Note that although the USPTO government fee for filing the provisional patent application may be deferred, our normal legal fees for preparing your provisional patent application are still needed. We offer several fixed fee provisional patent application preparation and filing services.
