Section 142 of the Patents Act, 1970
Fees
Section 142 makes fees payable for patent applications, grants and other steps, and stops the Patent Office acting until they are paid.
Official legal text
The verbatim statutory text of this provision is reproduced from the official source and checked by our legal reviewer before it is published here. Until that check is complete for this page, read the exact wording directly from the official source linked below — it is the only version that governs.
Treat this page as a guide. The provision as officially published, along with the Gazette notifications that apply to it, remains the governing text and overrides any simplification here.
What this section says, in plain language
Section 142 is the fee-charging engine of the Patents Act. It does not itself name any amount. Instead it allows the Central Government to fix, by rules, what must be paid for filing an application, for getting a patent granted, and for the many other steps the Act allows a person to take. Those amounts live in the First Schedule to the Patents Rules, 2003. Keeping them out of the Act means the Government can revise them by notification without Parliament amending the statute, so the figures you saw two years ago may not be the figures that apply today.
The section then does something practical. It tells the Controller not to perform an act until the fee for that act has been paid, and it treats a document filed at the Patent Office as not filed at all until its fee is paid. That second rule is the one that catches people. A request for examination uploaded on the last permitted day, with the payment left incomplete, is not a late filing. In law it is no filing. The application can then be treated as withdrawn, and no amount of explaining will put the paperwork back in time.
Fees in India are tiered by who the applicant is. Natural persons, startups, small entities and educational institutions pay a much lower rate than other applicants, and where two or more people apply jointly every one of them must qualify for the lower rate to be claimed. Proof of that status is filed on Form 28. If the status later changes, for example a startup crosses the limits in the startup notification or a small company is bought by a large one, the difference between the two rates may have to be made good. Filing on paper instead of online also costs more, and specifications that run beyond the free page limit or claim beyond the free claim limit attract extra charges per extra page and per extra claim.
Section 142 also deals with a timing problem. Renewal fees under Section 53 start falling due from the third year, but a patent is often granted long after the third year has passed. The section, read with Rule 80, lets the patentee pay all the renewal fees that piled up during pendency within three months of the date the patent is recorded in the register, and lets the Controller extend that on a request up to a maximum of nine months from the same date. Miss that window and the patent lapses even though it was granted only months earlier.
Finally, fees paid to the Patent Office are largely not refundable. The Rules allow refunds only in narrow situations, such as a limited refund of the examination fee where an application is withdrawn before examination has actually begun, and a refund where the office collected an amount in excess. Always check the current First Schedule and the refund rule before assuming money can be recovered.
Why this section matters
Every applicant, patentee, opponent, licensee and patent agent who files anything at the Indian Patent Office, and especially individual inventors, startups and MSMEs who rely on the reduced fee rates.
At every single step of the patent journey, from the day the application is filed to the last renewal before the term expires.
An obligation to pay the fee prescribed in the First Schedule for each act, and a matching power for the Controller to simply not act, and to treat a document as unfiled, until that fee reaches the office.
A form with an unpaid or failed fee is treated as never filed, so statutory deadlines run out, applications are deemed withdrawn or abandoned, and granted patents lapse for unpaid renewals.
How it works in practice
A failed payment on the last day
Sundar Weaves Pvt Ltd, a small textile machinery maker in Coimbatore, filed a patent application for a low-tension yarn feeder. Its in-house engineer tracked the last date for filing the request for examination and uploaded Form 18 on that very day. The upload succeeded but the net banking transaction timed out, and nobody checked the payment receipt. Six weeks later the company noticed that the application status still showed no request for examination on record. Because Section 142 treats a document as not filed until its fee is paid, the Patent Office took the view that no request had been made within the permitted period, and the application was treated as withdrawn. The invention had already been published, so the company could not simply refile the same disclosure. Had the engineer confirmed the payment receipt on the same day, or filed a week earlier, the entire patent would have survived. Fee payment is not an administrative afterthought; it is the act that makes a filing legally real.
Simplified illustration only. Actual legal outcomes depend on the facts.
Key points to remember
- The Act empowers the Government to fix fees by rules; the actual amounts sit in the First Schedule to the Patents Rules, not in the Act.
- The Controller need not do an act until the fee for it is paid.
- A document is treated as not filed at all until its fee is paid, which can destroy a deadline.
- Natural persons, startups, small entities and educational institutions pay a reduced rate, claimed with Form 28.
- If every joint applicant does not qualify for the reduced rate, the higher rate applies to the whole filing.
- Renewal fees that fell due while the application was pending can be paid within three months of the patent being recorded, extendable to nine months.
- Refunds are the exception, not the rule.
Common mistakes and misunderstandings
- Believing that uploading a form on time is enough. Until the fee is actually received, the office treats the document as never filed.
- Assuming a company keeps the startup or small entity rate forever. If the entity outgrows that status or is acquired, the difference in fees can become payable.
- Thinking the fee amounts are written into the Patents Act. They are in the First Schedule to the Rules and are revised from time to time.
- Forgetting that a patent granted in, say, its seventh year still owes every renewal fee from the third year onwards, payable in a short window after the patent is recorded.
Connected provisions
The rules connected to a section are listed on their own because they are subordinate legislation. They cannot go beyond the Act, but they can be changed by notification without a new statute, so seeing them separately makes it easier to check whether the current procedure is still what you remember.
Forms, deadlines and fees
Any form mentioned here is prescribed by the Second Schedule. Amendments to the Rules often bring new versions of forms with them, so use the version currently published by the Patent Office, not a template from a book or an old file.
- A form counts as filed only on the day its fee is actually received, so a delayed payment can push a filing past a statutory deadline.
- Where a patent is granted after the renewal fees have already started falling due, the accumulated renewal fees may be paid within three months of the patent being recorded in the register, extendable by the Controller up to nine months from that date.
Open the deadline calculator — and have every date confirmed against the current Rules before you rely on it.
This site does not carry a fee table. The First Schedule to the Patents Rules is the source, the rates vary with the applicant's category and with the mode of filing, and a figure quoted second-hand goes out of date quietly. How Indian patent fees work.
Related judgments
Case summaries are published only after a qualified reviewer has checked the judgment, the citation and the way the holding is described. Nothing has cleared that review for this provision yet, so nothing is listed here. We would rather show no case note than one that misstates what a court decided. How case notes are prepared.
Questions people ask about Section 142
Where do I find the current patent fees in India?
The amounts are not in the Patents Act. They are set out in the First Schedule to the Patents Rules, 2003, which the Government revises from time to time by notification. Always work from the version of the First Schedule in force on the day you intend to pay, because an old fee schedule saved on your computer may no longer be correct. The Patent Office also charges different amounts depending on whether you file online or on paper, and adds a per-page and per-claim charge once the specification exceeds the free limits.
Who can claim the reduced patent fee rate?
Natural persons, recognised startups, small entities and educational institutions pay a substantially reduced rate compared with other applicants. The reduced rate is claimed by filing Form 28 with proof of status, such as the startup recognition certificate or the MSME registration. Where an application is filed jointly, every applicant must qualify for the reduced rate. If one joint applicant is a large company, the whole application is charged at the standard rate, even though the other applicant is an individual.
What happens if I pay a patent fee late?
It depends on which fee. For a document that must be filed with a fee, Section 142 treats the document as not filed until the fee is paid, so a late payment usually means a missed deadline rather than a late filing. For renewal fees there is a separate six month extension mechanism in the Act and Rules with an additional charge. Some periods can also be extended or condoned under Rule 138, but not every period is extendable, so the safest course is to pay early.
Are patent fees refundable if I withdraw my application?
Mostly not. The Rules allow only limited refunds, the best known being a partial refund of the examination fee where an application is withdrawn before examination has actually started. Amounts collected in excess of what was due can also be refunded. Beyond those situations, money paid to the Patent Office is not recoverable, so it is worth deciding on the scope of your claims and the number of pages before filing rather than paying for material you later delete.
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