Why you're probably being ripped off on your patent fees
Over eight million patents are held worldwide by many thousands of businesses, all of which have to pay renewal fees to the Patent Office of each country in order to keep their patents in force.
The amount payable is usually modest (£100 or so) varying from country to country and with the age of the patent.
But many patent holders find themselves paying up to four times the actual cost of these payments.
This is because they employ the services of patent attorneys or specialist renewals companies like CPA Global, Dennemeyer and Patrafee to take care of the renewals despite it being a fairly simple process.
Fees charged for everything in the patent world are high in most cases justifiably because patent laws are complex. As a patent owner you get used to regular bills and they are difficult to challenge because of this complexity.
Why do most businesses put up with this situation? For two reasons, firstly because it is difficult to find out exactly how much is payable and secondly because they do not trust themselves to make this important payment on time each year.
A new London startup called www.renewalsdesk.com has come up with a simple solution. It has collated all of the information about these renewal costs into a freely accessible website.
Patent-holders can also setup auto-payments to ensure the payments are made every year until the patent holder stops them. The charges levied for this service are a fraction of the current costs involved without the web of hidden fees that exist in the market.
"RenewalsDesk is saving patent holders money because it really takes advantage of how simple the system is as opposed to exploiting how complex patent-holders think it is. The savings involved can be huge as many businesses own a whole portfolio of patents and have to pay renewal fees for each individual country."