Anything Under the Sun Made By Man: Silver Lining to Fee Increases

The latest fee hikes at the Patent Office have taken hold, which is normally no cause for celebration. (Thankfully, I filed an application yesterday and saved a client some money.)

However, there is a silver lining: there is now a fee break for electronic filing. Hopefully, this will encourage more and more people to work the kinks out of the electronic filing system and incorporate it into their everyday processes.

I have filed a few applications electronically and overall it works well. Like any new software application, it takes time to learn the interface and figure out how the process works. Budget some time for the first couple filings, but once the process is learned, I find it much faster than conventional paper filing.

I don’t have the luxury (or liability) of handing my filings off to a paralegal staff, so the time savings and convenience is important to me. Of course, saving the staff a few minutes for each application should also be a priority for larger law firms.

Each time that I have had to call the PTO regarding electronic filing questions, I have had my problem resolved by very helpful and knowledgeable people at the PTO who were eager to track down a problem and resolve it quickly.

Posted by krajec on December 8, 2004 02:14 PM to Anything Under the Sun Made By Man
Copyright 2005, Russell Krajec. All Rights Reserved.