2504 Patents Subject to Maintenance Fees
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(a) Maintenance fees as set forth in §§ 1.20(e) through (g) are required to be paid in all patents based on applications filed on or after December 12, 1980, except as noted in paragraph (b) of this section, to maintain a patent in force beyond 4, 8 and 12 years after the date of grant.
(b) Maintenance fees are not required for any plant patents or for any design patents. Maintenance fees are not required for a reissue patent if the patent being reissued did not require maintenance fees.
Maintenance fees are required to be paid on all patents based on applications filed on or after December 12, 1980, except for plant patents and design patents.
Maintenance fees are not required for a reissue patent if the patent being reissued did not require maintenance fees.
- Where there are multiple continuation/divisional reissues of an original patent, the maintenance fee must be directed to the latest reissue patent.
- Only one maintenance fee is required for all the multiple reissue patents that replaced the single original patent.
Application filing dates for purposes of determining whether a patent is subject to payment of maintenance fees are as follows:
- (A) For an application not claiming benefit of an earlier application, the actual United States filing date of the application.
- (B) For an application claiming benefit of an earlier foreign application, the actual United States filing date of the application.
- (C) For a continuing (continuation, division, continuation-in-part) application claiming the benefit of a prior patent application, the actual United States filing date of the continuing application.
- (D) For a reissue application, including a continuing reissue application claiming the benefit of a reissue, the United States filing date of the original nonreissue application on which the patent reissued is based.
- (E) For an international application that has entered the United States as a Designated Office under 35 U.S.C. 371, the international filing date granted under the Patent Cooperation Treaty which is considered to be the United States filing date.
