Regulated by IPReg | Registered in England & Wales No: 07491607
© Hutchinson IP Ltd, 2012
We offer a re-drafting service for applicants wishing to enter the UK or European
national/regional phase of the PCT or to make a priority-claiming application. The
EPO has particularly stringent requirements on the form and content of patent applications
and this service aims to iron-out any potential problems prior to filing (or within
the "Rule 161 period").
European patent applications comprising more than 15 claims attract substantial "excess
claim fees" (currently €225, per claim, for claims 16-50, and €555, per claim, for
claims 50 onwards). As such, simply by reducing the number of claims, the official
fees can be significantly reduced. Moreover, by the appropriate use of multiple
claim dependencies, Markush groupings, and by revising the description it is often
possible to bring the total number of claims within the "free" allowance without
any loss of clam scope or subject matter. Tom Hutchinson is particularly adept at
this and has been known to "condense" up to 5 partially-overlapping US priority applications
into a single European patent application, whilst retaining all of the claim scope
and subject matter, but without incurring any excess claims fees.
Another common problem with European applications is the need to respond to the ISR/IPRP
and how to deal with unity, divisional and unsearched subject matter issues. Our
patent re-drafting service aims to alleviate some of the problems that are often
encountered in these regards, and to address certain other formal matters (e.g. two-part
claim formulation, reference signs, antecedent basis etc.) in a proactive way.
If you would like us to provide a quotation for this service, then please let us
have a copy of the priority/PCT application for consideration and review no less
than two weeks before the relevant due date. In most cases, our quoted fee will
be considerably less than the additional fees payable had you not used the service,
and in addition, the number of Office Actions can sometimes be reduced giving rise
to long-term cost savings.
