The EPO’s new appeal fee refunds explained

The European Patent Office are set to increase the official fee for filing an appeal by 20% to €2,705 as of 1 April 2020. Alongside this fee increase, new 25% and 75% refunds of the fee will be offered if an appeal is withdrawn prior to a decision being taken, in addition to the existing 50% refund ¹.

The EPO hope these changes will incentivise appellants to continuously consider whether they still have an interest in pursuing their appeal. The intention is that any withdrawn appeals will reduce processing times for pending appeals.

The level of the refund depends on the stage the appeal is at when the withdrawal is filed:

Additionally, a 25% refund will be given if the request for oral proceedings, but not the appeal itself, is withdrawn and no oral proceedings are held. This would usually only happen in examination appeals but has the troubling consequence of effectively imposing a fee for oral proceedings.

Given the complexity of the new refund structure and the relatively small refund increments, it will be interesting to see how much uptake this will have and the effect on the processing times of appeals.

¹ EPO Official Journal 2020 A5 - Decision of the Administrative Council of 12 December 2019 amending Rule 103 of the Implementing Regulations to the European Patent Convention