{"id":1344,"date":"2026-07-07T06:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.franke-ip.com\/en\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2026-07-07T06:24:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:24:00","slug":"the-quiet-cost-creep-how-the-epo-has-multiplied-its-fees-step-by-step-in-recent-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.franke-ip.com\/en\/the-quiet-cost-creep-how-the-epo-has-multiplied-its-fees-step-by-step-in-recent-years\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quiet Cost Creep: How the EPO Has Multiplied Its Fees, Step by Step, in Recent Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"European<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When the European Patent Office (EPO) announces a fee increase, the headline number is usually reassuring: “an average of 4%”, “around 5%”. These percentages are technically correct \u2014 and still misleading. They describe the mean across a fee schedule with well over a hundred line items, most of which any given applicant only ever pays a fraction of. Anyone who actually goes through a typical European patent procedure \u2014 a double-digit claim count, a PCT phase with a non-European search authority, the occasional divisional application, and ten or more years of renewal payments \u2014 experiences a very different cost trajectory. Alongside the regular, well-publicised fee rounds, the EPO has over the last decade and a half made a series of structural changes that individually made few headlines but add up to a substantial sum. Five of them are worth a closer look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The Vanished Discount for Euro-PCT Applications with a Non-European Search Authority<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who files an international application (PCT) with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the Chinese patent office (CNIPA) or the Russian patent office as the International Searching Authority (ISA), and subsequently enters the European phase, must pay the EPO for a supplementary European search \u2014 after all, the EPO did not carry out the original international search itself. Until 2018, this supplementary search fee was reduced by a fixed amount for exactly this scenario: the reduction had been introduced in 2005 by decision of the Administrative Council (CA\/D 10\/05) and applied to applications whose international search had been carried out by the USPTO, JPO, KIPO, CNIPA, the Russian office (Rospatent) or the Australian patent office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By decision of 13 December 2017 (CA\/D 16\/17, published in OJ EPO 2018, A3), the Administrative Council abolished this reduction outright as of 1 April 2018, with no replacement. Since then, applicants whose PCT search was carried out by one of these major non-European offices pay the full supplementary search fee \u2014 currently \u20ac1,595 (as of April 2026). The reduction survives only for a small group of European partner offices: Austria, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, plus the Nordic Patent Institute and the Visegrad Patent Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, this means that entry into the European phase has become noticeably more expensive since 2018 for exactly the applicants who most often route their PCT applications through the USPTO, JPO, KIPO or CNIPA as ISA \u2014 namely US, Japanese, Korean and Chinese applicants \u2014 without this showing up in any of the EPO’s regular “fee increase” announcements. It is not a fee increase in the strict sense; it is the quiet removal of a discount, with the same effect on the final invoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. New and Rising Fees for Divisional Applications<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since 1 April 2014, the EPO has charged an additional filing fee for divisional applications of the second and any subsequent generation (decision CA\/D 15\/13 of 16 October 2013, OJ EPO 2014, A22). First-generation divisionals are exempt; from the second generation onward, the additional fee rises progressively, becoming a flat amount from the fifth generation. The EPO’s stated purpose was to make “long sequences of divisional applications” \u2014 and the resulting extension of pendency \u2014 less attractive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When introduced in 2014, the additional fees were \u20ac210 (2nd generation), \u20ac420 (3rd generation), \u20ac630 (4th generation) and \u20ac840 (5th generation and beyond). Today the same line items stand at \u20ac235, \u20ac480, \u20ac715 and \u20ac955 respectively \u2014 an increase of 12\u201314% since introduction, even though this fee was untouched by the headline 2024 and 2026 reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real cost driver for divisionals now lies elsewhere, however: every divisional application requires retroactive payment of all renewal fees from the third year of the original filing date onward. Since precisely those early renewal fees \u2014 as shown below \u2014 have risen the most since 2024, filing a divisional today is substantially more expensive than it was just two years ago, even without the divisional-specific fee itself having moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Claims Fees: From an Afterthought to a Fixed Cost Item<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before 2008, a high claim count at the EPO was almost inconsequential: each claim from the eleventh onward carried a modest fee of \u20ac45. On 1 April 2008, the Administrative Council raised this amount for the 16th and each subsequent claim to \u20ac200 \u2014 a fourfold jump in one step. Just a year later, on 1 April 2009, the second stage followed: a separate, much higher rate of \u20ac500 was introduced for the 51st and each subsequent claim, described by commentators at the time as “draconian”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, this rate too has climbed steadily: as of 1 April 2024, the fee for the 16th to 50th claim rose from \u20ac265 to \u20ac275, and the fee for the 51st and each subsequent claim from \u20ac660 to \u20ac685. On 1 April 2026, further increases brought these to \u20ac290 and \u20ac720 respectively. Taken together, that is a roughly 45% increase over the 2009 starting point \u2014 for an application with, say, 60 claims (not unusual in many technical fields), claims fees alone quickly add up to a four-figure sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The Two-Tier Appeal Fee: An Increase Dressed Up as a Discount<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Until 2018, appeals before the EPO’s Boards of Appeal carried a single, uniform fee: \u20ac1,880, regardless of who filed the appeal. On 1 April 2018, the Administrative Council introduced a two-tier structure: for natural persons, SMEs, non-profit organisations, universities and public research organisations (the entities listed in Rule 6(4) and (5) EPC), the fee stayed at \u20ac1,880. For every other appellant \u2014 in practice, any company that does not qualify as an SME \u2014 the fee rose to \u20ac2,255.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 1 April 2020, the next step followed: the standard fee jumped to \u20ac2,705, while the reduced fee edged up only modestly to \u20ac1,955. Today the rates stand at \u20ac2,925 (standard) and \u20ac2,015 (reduced) \u2014 figures that were left unchanged in 2024, and are accordingly reported in official communications as “no change”, even though they are the result of the two very substantial increases that preceded them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken as a whole, the appeal fee for the majority of represented clients \u2014 companies that are not SMEs \u2014 has risen from \u20ac1,880 to \u20ac2,925 since 2018, an increase of around 56%. The “reduced” fee reserved for individual inventors, SMEs and universities grew by only about 7% over the same period (\u20ac1,880 to \u20ac2,015). The official narrative consistently emphasises the social dimension \u2014 protecting smaller applicants \u2014 while obscuring the fact that a substantial fee increase was simply introduced for the majority of appeals actually filed, packaged as the creation of a new discount category. Anyone reading only the “appeal fee unchanged” announcements from 2024 and 2026 would never see this increase at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The “Linearisation” of Renewal Fees \u2014 the Biggest Lever<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By far the largest, and least “quiet”, intervention concerns the renewal fees for the third to tenth year. Historically, these fees did not rise evenly but featured a conspicuous jump at the sixth year, reflecting the shorter average pendency times of earlier decades. By decision of 14 December 2023 (CA\/D 16\/23), effective 1 April 2024, the Administrative Council “linearised” this curve \u2014 with the stated aim of offsetting the revenue shortfall caused by significantly shorter average time-to-grant. Shorter pendency means fewer years in which the EPO itself collects renewal fees (after grant, they flow to the national offices instead) \u2014 the Office’s response was to raise sharply the early renewal fees that are still paid to the EPO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The table below shows the trajectory from the pre-April-2024 level to the most recent increase on 1 April 2026 (decision CA\/D 9\/25 of 11 December 2025, roughly +5% across the board):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renewal fee<\/th>pre-04\/2024<\/th>from 04\/2024<\/th>from 04\/2026<\/th>Total increase<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Year 3<\/td>\u20ac530<\/td>\u20ac690<\/td>\u20ac725<\/td>+37%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Year 4<\/td>\u20ac660<\/td>\u20ac845<\/td>\u20ac885<\/td>+34%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Year 5<\/td>\u20ac925<\/td>\u20ac1,000<\/td>\u20ac1,050<\/td>+14%<\/td><\/tr>
Year 6<\/td>\u20ac1,180<\/td>\u20ac1,155<\/td>\u20ac1,215<\/td>+3%<\/td><\/tr>
Year 7<\/td>\u20ac1,305<\/td>\u20ac1,310<\/td>\u20ac1,375<\/td>+5%<\/td><\/tr>
Year 8<\/td>\u20ac1,440<\/td>\u20ac1,465<\/td>\u20ac1,540<\/td>+7%<\/td><\/tr>
Year 9<\/td>\u20ac1,570<\/td>\u20ac1,620<\/td>\u20ac1,700<\/td>+8%<\/td><\/tr>
Years 10\u201320<\/td>\u20ac1,775<\/td>\u20ac1,775<\/td>\u20ac1,865<\/td>+5%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The distribution is telling: the third- and fourth-year renewal fees \u2014 which practically every applicant must pay, regardless of whether the application is ultimately granted, refused, or withdrawn \u2014 rose the most, by +37% and +34% respectively. The sixth-year fee was actually cut slightly in 2024, before rising again in 2026. For a procedure of normal length, the net effect is a substantial front-loading of cost into the earlier, less certain years of the procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Further Increases in the Slipstream of the Reforms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 and 2026 reforms also raised the other core procedural fees, if more moderately:<\/p>\n\n\n\n