UK patent fees and forms (2026)

UKIPO fees to get a patent granted

The IPO charges three fees before grant: the application fee, the search fee and the examination fee. Filing online is cheaper: the application fee is set lower for electronic filing, and the search and examination fees are reduced by £40 each when Form 9A or Form 10 is filed online ( Patents (Fees) Rules 2007 , rules 3 and 3A). There is no separate grant fee unless claims or pages are added late (see below).

A PCT application entering the UK national phase pays no application fee; it pays £40 on Form NP1 to begin the national phase (Fees Rules, rule 3(1)(a) and 3(2)), and the lower search fee if the International Searching Authority has already searched it.

Excess claims and excess page fees

• Excess claims fee: the search fee goes up by £27 for the 26th and each later claim in the application ( rule 3B ).
• Excess page fee: the examination fee goes up by £13 for the 36th and each later page of the description ( rule 3C ).
• Grant fee on Form 34: if, when the IPO tells you the application meets the requirements for grant, it has more than 25 claims and more claims than when you asked for the search, or more than 35 description pages and more pages than when you asked for examination, you pay £27 per extra claim and £13 per extra page. It is due within 2 months of that notification ( Patents Rules rule 30A ; Fees Rules rule 3D ).

Example: filed online with 30 claims and 40 pages of description, the search costs £200 + 5 × £27 = £335 and examination £130 + 5 × £13 = £195. With the application fee the total is £605, against £405 for 25 claims and 35 pages.

Deadlines for the search and examination fees

• Application fee and search (Form 9A): within 12 months of the filing date, or, if priority is claimed, 12 months from the priority date or 2 months from filing if that ends later ( rule 22).
• Examination (Form 10): within 6 months of the date the application is published (rule 28(2) ). Publication normally follows about 18 months from the priority date.
• Inventorship (Form 7): within 16 months of the filing date or the priority date (rule 10(3)).

Divisional applications have their own periods under the same rules. The UK patent application guide puts these dates on a timeline with publication and grant.

UKIPO patent forms and their fees

The forms most applicants and owners use, with the fee set for each in Schedule 1 to the Patents (Fees) Rules 2007 . The forms themselves are on the IPO's patent forms and fees page. Forms 1, 7, 9A and 10 are combined into one form, so you can file the application, the inventorship statement and both requests together.

UK patent renewal fees, years 5 to 20

Renewal fees are paid on Form 12 or online. Each fee is due at an anniversary of the filing date and keeps the patent in force for the following year, so the fee at the 4th anniversary pays for the 5th year ( Fees Rules Schedule 2 ).

A patent endorsed "licence of right" pays half the renewal fee (IPO fee list). A European patent (UK) also pays its UK renewal fees to the IPO, for the years after the mention of grant; see EPO renewal fees for the years before.

UK patent renewal deadline and grace period

First renewal. The first renewal date is the 4th anniversary of the filing date. The fee can be paid in the 3 months ending on the last day of the month in which that anniversary falls ( rule 37(2)).

Late grant. If the patent is granted in the 3 months before the 4th anniversary or later, the first renewal date is 3 months after grant and the fee can be paid from grant until the end of that month ( rule 37(3)). That first payment covers every anniversary already passed: if the first renewal date falls in the 6th year, the 5th- and 6th-year fees are paid together ( £210; Fees Rules rule 4(2)).

Later renewals. Each later fee is due at the next anniversary of the filing date and can be paid in the 3 months ending on the last day of that anniversary month ( rule 38). The last-day-of-the-month rule means a patent filed on 3 March and one filed on 28 March share the same deadline: 31 March.

Paying late: the 6-month grace period

If the fee is not paid in the renewal period, the patent ceases to have effect, but it is treated as if it had never expired if the fee and the additional fee are paid by the end of the 6th month after the month in which the renewal period ended ( Patents Act 1977, s. 25(3) and (4) ). The IPO sends a reminder to the proprietor within 6 weeks after the renewal period ends ( rule 39). The additional fee depends on the month you pay in:

Amounts from Schedule 2, Part 2 of the Fees Rules. The additional fee is the same whatever the patent year.

After the grace period: restoration under section 28

Once the 6 months have passed, the patent has lapsed. The proprietor can apply to restore it on Form 16 ( £180) until the end of the 13th month after the month in which the 6-month period ended ( rule 40(1)), with evidence explaining the failure to pay. The IPO restores the patent only if it is satisfied that the failure was unintentional, and on payment of the unpaid renewal fee and any prescribed additional fee ( section 28(3)). The application is published in the journal, and the fee is not refunded if it is refused ( gov.uk, Renew a patent).

The April 2026 UKIPO fee increase

All the amounts on this page apply from 1 April 2026, when SI 2026/183 came into force. Its explanatory note puts the patent increases at between 25% and 40%; the IPO announced an average 25% rise across patents, trade marks and designs, the first for patents since 2018 ( IPO news story). Some examples, before and after, from the IPO fee list: online application fee £60 to £75, online search £150 to £200, online examination £100 to £130, excess claim £20 to £27, excess page £10 to £13, 5th-year renewal £70 to £90 and 20th-year renewal £610 to £810.

One transitional rule matters for renewals: a renewal fee for a renewal date before 1 April 2026 could still be paid at the old amount after that date, as long as it was paid by the end of the 6-month late period (SI 2026/183, rule 34(1)).

More UKIPO guides

• Patent drawing requirements: USPTO, EPO and India

  37 CFR 1.84, the EPO rules that replaced Rule 46 EPC, and Indian rule 15, compared side by side.

• How to write patent claims: USPTO, EPO and India

  Claim structure and worked examples, then the claim rules and fees at the USPTO, the EPO and the Indian Patent Office, side by side.

• How to file a UK patent application (UKIPO)

  Forms 9A and 10, the deadlines, the IPO fees in force from 1 April 2026, the Green Channel, renewals and the European route.

• The UK Patent Box, explained

  The 10% rate, which UK, EP and EEA patents qualify, the R&D (nexus) fraction, the election deadline and a worked example.

• Types of patent searches, and which one you need

  Patentability, freedom-to-operate, invalidity and landscape searches compared by purpose, timing, scope and deliverable.

• Patentability search: how to check novelty before you file

  What counts as prior art under 35 U.S.C. 102 and Art. 54 EPC, the grace period gap, search steps and how to read results.

• Freedom-to-operate search in the US and Europe

  In-force claims only, legal status checks at the USPTO, EPO and UPC, FTO opinions after Halo, and design-arounds.

• Invalidity search: prior art to challenge a patent

  IPR, PGR, EPO opposition and UPC revocation deadlines, prior art dates, standards documents and claim charts.

• Patent landscape analysis, step by step

  Building a CPC and keyword dataset, cleaning families and names, the metrics that matter and the 18-month publication lag.

• Google Patents search guide

  Search operators and fields, Boolean and proximity syntax, non-patent literature, and where Google Patents falls short of the official databases.

• The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), explained

  How CPC symbols are built, CPC against IPC, the Y section, how to find the right class and how to search it in each database.

• Patent search Boolean operators and search strings

  Boolean, proximity and truncation syntax compared across Patent Public Search, Espacenet, Google Patents and The Lens, with semantic search for contrast.

• The PCT application: timeline, fees and national phase

  The international phase month by month, receiving Office and ISA fees in CHF, USD and EUR, national phase deadlines by office, and a deadline calculator.

• How much does a patent cost?

  USPTO fees by entity size from filing to the last maintenance fee, what drives professional fees, EPO fees, and an estimator.

• How long does a patent last?

  US utility and design terms, patent term adjustment and extension, terminal disclaimers, maintenance fee deadlines, Europe and India, with an expiry estimator.

• Can AI write a patent application?

  What AI drafting does well and badly, the USPTO and EPO positions on AI tools, AI inventorship after 2025, and confidentiality.

• PCT national phase deadlines by country

  30, 31 or more months: the national phase time limit at every office in WIPO's table, late-entry options and a deadline calculator.

• PCT search report, written opinion and Chapter II

  How to read the international search report and written opinion, Article 19 amendments, informal comments, and when a Chapter II demand is worth filing.

All guides, by patent office