Foreign patent cost
Is your PCT patent approaching the 30 month deadline? Need to budget for foreign patent costs?
Ensure that you select appropriate national phase countries and budget properly.
Don’t get caught budgeting for filing fees only, and end up with insufficient funds to cover translations, prosecution and grant fees.
How to use our foreign patent costing tool
- input your patent details by updating the fields highlighted in yellow; and
- select the foreign national phase patents you wish to file by updating the “0” value in the “Select” column to “1”.
The spreadsheet calculates anticipated “filing cost” (including translation cost), “prosecution costs” and costs payable upon “grant”. Note that, although we maintain these costs current, they are subject to fluctuation.
Tip: We suggest filing national phase patents in South Africa, India, US, Australia, Europe, China and Brazil. Also consider using the GlobalIPCo online national phase patent filing system.
Spreading your national phase filing cost
The following patents can be filed 31 months following the priority date:
Africa: South Africa, ARIPO, Botswana, Algeria, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia
Asia-Pacific: India, Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Denmark, Indonesia, Eurasian Patent, Syria, Vietnam
Europe: European Patent Organisation, Russia
Americas: Colombia
On payment of a fee, you can delay filing a national phase patent in: (i) China to 32 months; and (ii) Canada to 42 months.
And, on payment of a nominal fee, you can extend the period to file a national patent in South Africa to 34 months. Since South Africa is not an examining country, you should receive a granted South African patent at a fixed cost of only US$585 – the cheapest country in the world to secure a patent. The most affordable South African national phase patent filing ($399) is offered by GlobalIPCo (for whom we are the exclusive South African agent). GlobalIPCo also files Nigerian patents.