Amendments to the Korean Enforcement Rule on Collection of Patent Fees, etc. (hereinafter, "New Rule") became effective on August 1, 2023, resulting in changes to official KIPO fees including request for examination fees, annuity payments, and fees for filing divisional applications, among others. Under the New Rule, applicants should pay close attention to the number of claims as the increased fee would be felt most when requesting examination. Some of the more notable changes are outlined in detail below.

1. Requests for Examination and Annuity
 
The New Rule increases the request for examination fees by about 15-16% but reduces annuity payments by about 7-15%. Table 1 (Link) provides a more detailed breakdown of the changes.
 
Fees for requesting examination and annuity payments for an exemplary application with 20 claims is provided in Table 2 (Link) to highlight how the New Rule would impact a typical application.
 
The applicable dates for the above fee changes under the New Rule are as follows:

• Increased Examination Fees: Applies to applications filed on or after August 1, 2023
• Reduced Annuity (Years 1 to 3): Applies to applications for which a Notice of Allowance is issued on or after August 1, 2023
• Reduced Annuity (From Year 4 Onwards): Applies to patents for which payment deadline is on or after August 1, 2023.

The new fees for examination requests and annuity payments only apply to patents and are not applicable to utility models, design patents, and trademarks.

2. Divisional Filing
 
Under the old rules, the official fees for filing a divisional application remained the same regardless of the number of times a divisional application has been filed. However, under the New Rule, the official fees will increase proportionally with the number of times a divisional application is filed. Table 3 (Link) provides details of the changes.
 
The new official fees for divisional applications aim at discouraging abuse of the divisional application process as a means of prolonging the pendency of the application.
 
The fee changes for divisional applications only apply to patents and are not applicable to utility models, design patents, and trademarks.

3. Official Fees for Trademark Applications
 
Under the old rules, an official fee of KRW 2,000 is incurred for each item in excess of twenty items (goods/services) per class at the filing and registration stages of trademark applications. The New Rule reduces the number of items to ten.
 
In addition, the filing fee and the registration fee for trademark applications are reduced from KRW 62,000 to KRW 52,000 (per class) and from KRW 211,000 to KRW 201,000 (per class), respectively.
 
In practice, we do not expect the total application fee and registration fee to change substantially despite the changes under the New Rule.

4. Uniform Transfer of Registration Fees
 
Under the New Rule, a standard fee of KRW 40,000 is incurred for transferring registration of all types of intellectual property rights – patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks as shown in Table 4 (Link).