UK patent renewals

Pay a UK Patent renewal fee using our online store.

To keep a UK patent in-force, you need to pay renewal fees every year.  At Hutchinson IP, we provide a competitively-priced, fixed-fee patent renewals service.

Under current UK law, any person can pay a renewal fee so it is not necessary for us to become your “address for service” (i.e. replace your existing patent attorney) in order to pay a patent renewal fee.  This means that you can use us to handle your UK patent renewals, whilst keeping your existing attorney for all other matters.  Alternatively, we can take over representation, in which case, Hutchinson IP will replace your existing attorney and all future communications regarding the patent will come to us in the first instance.

ONE-OFF OR ON-GOING RENEWAL FEE PAYMENTS:

We can pay a single renewal fee (as a one-off), or you can instruct us to monitor and attend to future renewals as well.  If you are paying a one-off renewal fee, for example, to keep a competitor’s patent in force during ongoing commercial negotiations, or infringement and/or validity proceedings, please let us know so that we can monitor the case and let you know if a future renewal fee needs to be paid, e.g. if the proceedings span two successive renewal fee deadlines.

PATENT RENEWAL COSTS:

The cost of a renewal fee payment has to elements: the official fee (i.e. the fee that is paid to the UKIPO to keep the patent in-force for another year) and our service charge (i.e. what we charge on top of the official fee for handling the renewal fee payment).

UKIPO OFFICIAL FEES FOR PATENT RENEWALS:

The official fees are set by the UKIPO and range from £70 for the 5th year renewal fee (payable by the 4th anniversary of the application’s filing date, to cover the 5th year in advance), to £610 for the 20th year renewal fee.  The official fees are subject to periodic increases, the most recent of which was in April 2018, and these are usually published online by the UKIPO.  

OUR SERVICE CHARGE FOR PATENT RENEWALS:

Our service charge covers various things, including: entering your patent into our renewals reminder system, notifying you of the deadline, issuing reminders at 3, 2 and 1 month before the due date, receiving and acknowledging your instructions, attending to paying the fee (booking your incoming funds, completing filing the requisite form, topping-up our deposit account to cover the renewal fee payment, monitoring our deposit account statement to confirm that the payment has been made, receiving and forwarding the renewal fee payment certificate).  As such, there are a number of processes involved, and due care needs to be taken to ensure that deadlines are not missed, funds are available, and to cross-check that the payment has been made. This is the complex part that you are paying us to attend to so that you can get on with doing other things.  We have a fairly sophisticated docketing and accounting system in place, and we are well-versed in attending to renewal fee payments, so we take the hassle out of the process for you.  Our service charge is fixed, for all of the above, and costs just £125 + VAT, regardless of the renewal fee year.

VAT ON PATENT RENEWALS:

VAT is payable for all companies and individuals liable to UK Value Added Tax (VAT). The current rate of VAT is 20%, so our service charge is £150 including VAT.  If you are not liable to UK VAT (i.e. if you are based overseas, or if you are a company liable to VAT in another EU member state), then VAT is either not chargeable, or “reverse charged”, in which case, you just pay £125.  

VAT is not payable on the renewal fee itself, however, because this element is classed as a “government fee”.  This explains why the total including VAT is not simply 20% more than the base price net of VAT.

PATENT RENEWAL PRICE LIST:

To summarise, our fixed-fee price list for attending to UK patent renewals is:

Pay a UK Patent renewal fee using our online store.

Renewal year	Official fee	Service charge	Total (ex VAT)	Total (inc VAT)
5	£70	£125	£195	£220
6	£90	£125	£205	£240
7	£110	£125	£235	£260
8	£130	£125	£255	£280
9	£150	£125	£275	£300
10	£170	£125	£295	£320
11	£190	£125	£315	£340
12	£220	£125	£355	£380
13	£260*	£125	£385	£410
14	£300*	£125	£425	£450
15	£360*	£125	£485	£510
16	£420*	£125	£545	£570
17	£470*	£125	£595	£620
18	£520*	£125	£645	£670
19	£570*	£125	£695	£720
20	£610*	£125	£735	£760