How Do Co-Inventors Determine Micro-Entity Status?
Dear Rich: The micro-entity fees in the new patent act were supposed to go into effect two years ago but I can't find them at the USPTO? Have they gone into effect? Why not? And when/if they go into effect how do co-inventors qualify? When Congress passed patent reform, one of the crumbs thrown to independent inventors was a discounted fee structure. Instead of 50% off the patent fees for small entity status (a company with under 500 employees), the USPTO was supposed to offer a discount of 75% to inventors who met certain requirements known as micro-entities (see our
article comparing small entity and micro-entity status). The micro-entity provision of the law was effective as of September 16, 2011 but (
according to the Federal Register) the new fees are not expected to be implemented until March 19, 2013 (about the same time the new first-to-file rules go into effect).
How do you determine micro-entity status for multiple inventors? The rules apply individually to each joint-inventor. So, no joint inventor can have been named as an inventor on more than four applications, and no joint inventor can have a gross income (as defined by the IRS) exceeding three times the median household income for the preceding calendar year (currently $150,162).
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