Spanish Patent Renewal Fee Schedule

Spanish Patent Renewal Rules

Renewal Procedure and Patent Renewal Fees at the Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas.

An summary for information purposes of the patent renewal rules in place in Spain.

Renewal Years

Spanish patents must be renewed after grant every year from the third year onwards.

For nationally filed patent rights, there is a similar set up to the UK, where annuities accrued during the pendancy of the application before grant are payable once the patent has granted. Note that this doesn’t apply to patents granted through the European application process at the European Patent Office (EPO).

European Applications

As usual, if the original application was made through the European Patent Office (EPO), fees are not due to the Spanish patent office until after grant. During the application stage, fees are paid to the EPO only.

Renewal Dates & Payment Windows

The third year fee becomes due at the end of the month containing the second anniversary of the patent’s filing date. Fees are then due by the end of the month each year in the month of the filing date anniversary.

Late Payments

There is a staged set of penalty fees that apply to late payments. If a payment is up to three months late, a surcharge of 25% applies. This is raised to 50% for months four to six. Previously, it had been possible to obtain an automatic reinstatement for cases where the 6 month grace period deadline had not been met, up to 12 months from the due date on payment of a specified penalty. However, this is no longer available, and patent owners should be additionally careful to make sure that Spanish fees are paid within the grace period.