Why Patent Expenses Are So High

People are often told that the cost of securing a patent is about $12,000 - $15,000. That statement is probably correct for simple applications. It costs about $8,000 - $12,000 to search, draft the application, and pay the government filing fees, another $1,500 to $5,000 to argue the application before the patent office, and another $750 to pay the issue fee.

Figure 1 — Costs Of Getting a Patent Issued

The problem is that such charges are often only the beginning. As described below, a single utility application can easily spawn numerous divisional or other continuation applications, and those other applications can increase the costs many fold. Add to that the costs of foreign prosecution foreign application, and what originated as a $15,000 budget can very quickly grow to $750,000 or more. To get a handle on that, let's review the costs of different types of U.S. utility applications, and then focus on the costs of foreign prosecution.