Online Patent Renewal Service is now available at PVIGO

TAIPEI, Taiwan - April 16, 2015 - PRLog -- Let’s review: When was the last time your company made a renewal payment? How much do you spend on annual patent maintenance? Last but not least, except for the actual official fee, how much is the leak paid to patent agencies? We strongly believe that the amounts you’ve put in vain are far beyond your imagination.

It is common that a patent takes at least 4-5 years to get granted, yet it is not the end of a patent’s journey; instead, it is a real start. The reason is that, if any negligence such as failing to pay one renewal, your hard work – granted patent might vanish without a trace.

When it comes to the maintenance of patent renewal payments, a corporation usually assigns the job to its legal or IP department. For a small or middle-sized company, however, it is not efficient to allocate specific responsible departments towards applications of different countries. Therefore, outsourcing is a common method when patent renewals management is required, which gives agencies murky room to invisibly reach their hands into your pocket.

The so-called “Adverse Selection Theory” in market occurs when buyers and sellers have asymmetric information (access to different information), and the seller is able to utilize his/her advantage in information access to be in a higher bargaining position. As to the buyer, he/she is only willing to pay the least in order to obtain service/product; in the end, quality service/product will gradually be “driven out” by the bad. If we apply this theory in viewing patent agency practice, the most evident situation is, big-sized/leading international patent renewals agencies uses low service fee to lure inexperienced customers; after the customers “take the bait”, they “fix” the unnoticeable official fee, making (sometimes lucrative) profit from it. The aforementioned situation is not rare. As a matter of fact, it has been widely discuss. One article(Hidden fees: Foreign exchange and the dark side of patent renewals (http://www.renewalsdesk.com/blog/company-news/hidden-fees...)) written by RenewalsDesk (a U.K.-based patent renewals agency) has straightly pointed out this type of “scam”.

According to NAIP PVIGO e-Services, official fee is undoubtedly fixed and non-negotiable; few companies would have idea about bargaining over it. In practice, however, amount of official fee is usually times more than that of service fee. If you are not cautious about the official fee, it is like you’re paying a huge amount of service fee. “So if you look into it, many reference exchange rate lists provided by patent renewal agencies actually are in favor of themselves, which is not updated by the actual rate fluctuation. Besides that, some even don’t provide their rate reference.” says PVIGO e-Services. The PVIGO e-Services further states, the difference of exchange rate may ranges from 10% to 20%, and it is the hidden cost to be covered by patent owners.

“Valued service” featured by patent renewal agencies should also be brought to your attention aside from the foreign rate trick. The prior task of a patent renewals agency is execution of timely reminder for renewal payment deadlines and amounts. Yet, a patent owner seeks more than that. “For example, if a company needs to adjust reminder scheduling, an additional fee would occur; if it wishes to inquire the regulation of certain county’s application for payment due date extension, another additional fee would occur.” NAIP PVIGO e-Services states that the relatively low service fee in the beginning seems like a “budget” admission fee. If you inquire additional services, more unreasonable service fees are to come.

So what patent owners should do to deal with patent renewals? As a matter of fact, as long as the quantities and the countries of patent applications keep growing, it is necessary to outsource. But don’t consider that you can be relieved after you fully entrust to an agency. NAIP PVIGO suggests, when choosing patent renewals agencies, patent owners must review the cost with a holistic view, meaning patent owners must be aware of those “invisible” additional fees aside from those listed service fees—for instance, bases of exchange rate calculation and quotation rules, particulars of additional charge calculation, and so on. In order to be more cost-efficient on patent renewals, patent owners must spend more time explicitly digging in the fee details.

[PVIGO Insight]

With what condition(s) a patent renewals agency can be deemed a quality agency? From PVIGO’s opinion, transparency should top the list.

NAIP PVIGO e-Services stands out among regular patent renewals agencies for it not only provides our clients patent official fee schedule and invoices, but also offers most up-to-date information of renewals online—our purpose is to make not only  your every dime count, but also make it transparent. Take patent renewal payment as an example, PVIGO e-Services leads clients to preview the official fee based on original currency. Meanwhile, as to the accumulated amount of official fee and service fee, PVIGO e-Services adopts daily selling rate available on Mega Bank (Taiwan)’s Daily Bulletin of Rate.

PVIGO Renewals Fee Table
（https://www.pvigo.com/Custmem/eTrans/AnnualFee/AnnualFeeSrh.aspx）

Learn more: “Patent Renewals Services (https://www.pvigo.com/CustMem/Pvigo_topRenewals.aspx?strEnc=en-US)” provided by NAIP.

Find out more: Services featured by “NAIP PVIGO e-Services (https://www.pvigo.com/CustMem/index.aspx)”

If you are interested in PVIGO site or its patent renewals services, welcome to write to service@pvigo.com, we’ll be at your service shortly.