New deadline for examination fee

New deadline for examination fee

On April 6, 2015, the Paraguayan Directorate for Intellectual Property (DINAPI) published Resolution 4/2015, which establishes that the substantive examination fee for patent applications must be paid within three years from the filing date. Applications that do not comply with the aforementioned resolution will be deemed to be withdrawn.

This resolution, which is in force since its publication, also establishes a grace period for the payment of the substantive examination fee until July 10, 2015, for those patent applications that, at the time of the publication of the resolution, had been filed more than three years ago and for which no substantive examination fee had been paid. After this non-extendable grace period, all patent applications affected by the resolution that have not paid this fee will be deemed to be withdrawn.

Before resolution 4/2015, in practice the substantive examination fee did not have to be paid until the application was ready for the substantive examination, that is, after the application had been subjected to the preliminary examination and the publication.

Source: http://www.dinapi.gov.py