The Government Encourages Entrepreneurship
Recently there has been a change in the Government filing fees for patents to help individuals, entrepreneurs and startup companies. Basically, if you or your company qualify, the filing fee is reduced to one half of the small entity filing fee. To determine whether you or your company qualified for Micro Entity Status when filing a patent application, consider the following basic questions:
Does the applicant or applicants qualify as a small entity? A small entity is determined when the owner is a “person” (i.e. individual or individuals) who has not assigned or granted any rights in the invention. Even if the inventor or applicant has transferred some rights in the invention, they can still qualify for small entity status if all the parties to whom rights in the invention were transferred qualify for small entity status.
Who is Awarded Micro-Entity Status?
The small entity status can be granted to a person, small business concern, or nonprofit organization. A small business concern means a business (a) Whose number of employees, including affiliates, does not exceed 500 persons; and (b) Which has not assigned or granted any rights in the invention to any person or concern which would not qualify as a non-profit organization or a small business concern. Note that the inventor or inventors are always individuals under US law.
When the owner is a nonprofit organization that has not assigned or granted any rights in the invention to any person or organization which would not qualify as a person, small business concern, or a nonprofit organization and is either:
- 1) a university;
- 2) a 501(c)(3) organization; or
- 3) Any nonprofit scientific or educational organization qualified under a nonprofit organization statute; they are entitled to micro entity status.
If the applicant or any joint inventor filed more than four US non-provisional patent applications they are not entitled to micro-entity status unless those applications were from a prior employment and assigned to the prior employer.If the applicant or any listed inventor have an income for the past year that was greater than $150,000, they are not entitled to micro-entity status. If the rights in the application been promised or licensed to a non-micro-entity, they are not entitled to micro-entity status.
Contact your Patent Attorney to learn more.
