Please note that the OMB number and expiration date may not have been determined when this Information Collection Request and associated Information Collection forms were submitted to OMB. The approved OMB number and expiration date may be found by clicking on the Notice of Action link below.

View ICR - OIRA Conclusion

OMB Control No: 0651-0072	ICR Reference No: 201205-0651-001
Status: Historical Inactive	Previous ICR Reference No:
Agency/Subagency: DOC/PTO	Agency Tracking No:
Title: America Invents Act Section 10 Patent Fee Adjustments
Type of Information Collection: New collection (Request for a new OMB Control Number)	Common Form ICR: No
Type of Review Request: Regular
OIRA Conclusion Action: Preapproved	Conclusion Date: 10/25/2012
Retrieve Notice of Action (NOA)	Date Received in OIRA: 09/06/2012
Terms of Clearance: Pre-approval contingent upon no substantive changes to this collection after adoption of the final rule. Otherwise this collection should be re-submitted to OMB for review.

	Inventory as of this Action	Requested	Previously Approved
Expiration Date	10/31/2015	36 Months From Approved
Responses	5,832,472	0	0
Time Burden (Hours)	1,660	0	0
Cost Burden (Dollars)	2,594,521,312	0	0

Abstract: The USPTO is submitting this request in support of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled "Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees" (RIN 0651-AC54). The USPTO proposes to set or adjust patent fees as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act ("Act" or "AIA") Pub.L.112-29. The proposed fees will provide the Office with a sufficient amount of aggregate revenue to recover its aggregate cost of patent operations and will help the Office implement a sustainable funding model, reduce the current patent application backlog, decrease patent pendency, improve patent quality, and upgrade the Office's patent business information technology ("IT") capability and infrastructure. The Office also proposes to reduce fees for a new class of patent applicants, "micro entities," under section 10(g) of the Act and proposes to include multipart and staged fees for requests for continued examination ("RCEs") and appeals. These proposals will foster innovation and increase application processing options. When fees are set or adjusted, the aggregate revenue from the patent fees may only be set to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the Office for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to patents, including administrative costs to the Office with respect to such patent operations. Under section 10(b) of the AIA, eligible small entities shall receive a 50 percent fee reduction from the large entity fees for filing, searching, examining, issuing, appealing, and maintaining patent applications and patents. The Act further provides that the micro entities shall receive a 75 percent fee reduction for filing, searching, examining, issuing, appealing, and maintaining patent applications and patents. This information collection request is submitted as a fee-based burden collection to best provide for comment and review of the fee adjustment burden impact of the proposed rulemaking. The USPTO will maintain the information requirements and non-fee burden for the information collection items within separate collections. This new collection will be maintained for fee burden adjustments only. The relevant fee burdens will be removed from their existing collections through non-substantive change requests to discontinue counting those burdens twice and overstating the total respondent burden in the USPTO inventory. This information collection request ("ICR") includes: + "Correct inventorship after first office action on the merits," an item introduced in this proposed rulemaking. The information collection requirements for this item will eventually be moved into 0651-0031 Patent Processing (Updating), and the fee will remain in this collection. + "Petitions to the Chief Administrative Patent Judge under 37 CFR 41.3," an item that is not covered by an existing information collection request and is added to this submission because the fee is affected by the proposed rulemaking. The information requirements for this item will eventually be moved into 0651-0063 Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) Actions, and the fee will remain in this collection. + Fee adjustments to existing and pending items in the agency inventory. Information requirements for those items will remain in their respective collections and only the corresponding fees (as adjusted by the proposed rulemaking) are submitted for this collection. + Response adjustments to existing and pending items in the agency inventory projected to be impacted by the fee adjustments because changes in some fees are expected to change demand for those services, which changes the number of responses. Information requirements for those items will remain in their respective collections and only the corresponding fees are submitted for this collection. The response adjustments are offered here solely for the purpose of capturing the total impact on burden due to the proposed rulemaking.

ICR Summary of Burden

	Total Request	Change Due to New Statute	Change Due to Agency Discretion
Annual Number of Responses	5,832,472	315,377	5,517,095
Annual Time Burden (Hours)	1,660	1,000	660
Annual Cost Burden (Dollars)	2,594,521,312	349,621,871	2,244,899,441

Burden increases because of Program Change due to Agency Discretion: Yes

Burden Increase Due to: Miscellaneous Actions

Burden decreases because of Program Change due to Agency Discretion: No

Burden Reduction Due to:

Short Statement: This information collection request (ICR) includes program changes that are part of the impact of the proposed rulemaking (new statute). In addition to the new information requirement introduced by this proposed rulemaking--Correct Inventorship After First Office Action on the Merits--these changes include revised fee amounts and fee structures that will have an impact on annual cost burden as well as on the estimated responses for the associated information requirements whose fees are affected by this ICR. This ICR also includes program changes that are not part of the impact of the proposed rulemaking. These changes are primarily from the movement of the affected fees and their associated responses (as estimated and approved in previous ICRs) into this new information collection, as well as the addition of an existing information requirement, Petition to the Chief Administrative Patent Judge Under 37 CFR 41.3, that is not covered by a current information collection. Please consult sections 1, 12, 13, and 15 of the Supporting Statement for further explanation of these changes.