From 13 February 2020, changes to the official fees for patents and trade marks take effect in New Zealand.
Patent fees
Fees for patents and patent applications in New Zealand will increase as shown in the table below.
A new fee will apply to patent applications with 30 claims or more. The fee will be $120 for each 5th claim over 25. The fee will be charged after the patent application has been accepted, and will need to be paid before the patent is granted. Although the fee will be payable at acceptance, it will be calculated based on the maximum number of claims that the application contained at any point during the examination process (i.e. between the time of requesting examination of the application and official acceptance of the application). Therefore, the number of claims in the application will need to be managed throughout prosecution of the application to avoid the claim fees.
Trade mark fees
The official fee for filing a New Zealand trade mark application will reduce from $150 to $100. Further fee reductions are available where the goods and services are selected from a pre-approved list, or where applications have already had a pre-application review from IPONZ. Renewal fees will also decrease from $350 to $200 (per class, every 10 years).