Patent Renewal Fees in India: The Full Schedule, and What Happens If You Miss One

A granted Indian patent is not a certificate you file away. It is a subscription. Miss a payment and the right does not sit dormant waiting for you to notice. It ceases, and the invention you spent years and a good deal of money protecting becomes free for anyone to work.

Most Indian lapses are not decisions. They are diary failures. An agent's retainer runs out, the company secretary who kept the renewal calendar leaves, and eighteen months later somebody runs a status check before a funding round and finds the patent is dead.

This guide covers the full fee schedule from year three to year twenty, the cost of holding one patent to term, the rule that catches out anyone whose patent was granted late, the six-month extension, what lapse means, and how restoration under Section 60 works, including the part of it most patentees discover too late.

Quick answer

Renewal fees start from the third year and run to the twentieth, under Section 53 of the Patents Act, 1970 with Rule 80 of the Patents Rules, 2003. Nothing is payable for the first two years, or while an application is merely pending.

The fee rises in four bands. Held to full term, government fees alone come to ₹76,800 for a natural person, startup, small entity or educational institution filing electronically, and ₹3,84,000 for everyone else.

Miss a due date and you get six months to pay late, on a Form 4 request, at ₹480 per month (₹2,400 for others). Miss that too and the patent ceases. You then have eighteen months from the date it ceased to apply for restoration in Form 15 under Section 60 — and restoration will not undo the rights third parties acquired while the patent was dead.

When the first renewal falls due

Rule 80(1) is the operative provision: to keep a patent in force, the renewal fees in the First Schedule "shall be payable at the expiration of the second year from the date of the patent or of any succeeding year". Three things follow, and each trips somebody up.

The clock runs from the date of the patent, not the date of grant. The date of the patent is the date of filing, so the third-year fee falls due at the end of the second year measured from filing, when you were probably still waiting for examination.

There is no annuity on a pending application. Rule 80 speaks of keeping a patent in force. Until grant, nothing is payable. Worth knowing if you also prosecute in Europe, where the EPO charges renewal fees on the pending application from the third year. India does not.

You always pay a year ahead. The "third year" fee keeps the patent alive through the third year and is paid before the second year ends.

The full fee schedule and the cost to term

Entry 18 of the First Schedule sets the annuity in four bands. Column I applies to a natural person, startup, small entity or educational institution; Column II to everyone else, including any patent where a Column II applicant is a co-applicant.

Physical filing costs about ten per cent more across the schedule (₹880, ₹2,650, ₹5,300 and ₹8,800 in Column I), so there is no sensible reason to pay a renewal over the counter.

The Column I rate is also not permanent. It attaches to your category on the date of payment, so a startup that outgrows its recognition, or a small entity that crosses the threshold, moves to Column II rates for later renewals — a five-fold increase that nobody announces to you. The startup fee rebate guide sets out how the categories are defined and when they lapse.

Eighteen payments, third year to twentieth, come to ₹76,800 in Column I and ₹3,84,000 in Column II on e-filing (₹84,620 and ₹4,22,400 on physical filing). Government fees only, excluding professional fees, GST and any late or restoration charges. For the filing and prosecution side of the bill, see the complete fee guide.

The money is heavily back-loaded: more than half the Column I total falls in years 16 to 20. The moment to decide whether a patent still earns its keep is therefore around year 10, before the expensive half begins.

The 10 per cent advance-payment reduction

Rule 80(3) has always allowed renewal fees for two or more years to be paid in advance. The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024 added a proviso: where the fee "is paid in advance through electronic mode for a period of at least 4 years, a ten per cent reduction in fee shall be applicable for such renewal."

Pay all eighteen years at once, electronically, and the Column I total drops to ₹69,120; the Column II total drops to ₹3,45,600, a saving of ₹38,400.

Whether that is wise depends on conviction, not arithmetic. Prepaying eighteen years buys a discount and immunity from a diary failure, and sinks money into a patent you may want to drop at year 11. For most portfolios the sensible course is four- or five-year blocks aligned to the fee bands, which captures the reduction without committing to the expensive back end.

The catch-up payment after a late grant

Indian patents are often granted four, five or six years after filing, so several annuities have already fallen due by the time the patent reaches the register.

You do not lose those years. The Patent Office's established practice is that where a patent is granted after the second year, all renewal fees accrued in the meantime may be paid together within three months from the date the patent is recorded in the register, extendable by up to six months on a Form 4 request under Rule 80(1A). Nine months from recordal is the outer limit.

This is the most commonly missed deadline in Indian post-grant practice, for an obvious reason. It is the one renewal deadline that is not an anniversary. It lands three months after a grant certificate, when everybody is celebrating and nobody is docketing.

One caveat, plainly. Rule 80 as published contains no express proviso for late grants; the three-month window is Patent Office practice, reflected in the Office's manual. Treat it as your operative deadline, and confirm the position on your own file rather than assuming a statutory entitlement.

Worked example: a patent granted in its fourth year

A hypothetical illustration, not a MYCrave client matter.

A small entity files on 12 April 2021. The patent is granted and recorded in the register on 3 October 2024, during the fourth year of the patent.

The catch-up. Two annuities have already fallen due: the third-year fee (11 April 2023) and the fourth-year fee (11 April 2024). Both are payable within three months of recordal, so by 2 January 2025. Cost: ₹1,600.

Back onto the cycle. The fifth-year fee is due 11 April 2025, and every fee after that on 11 April.

The cost to term. ₹1,600 of catch-up, then ₹1,600 for the fifth and sixth years, ₹9,600 for years 7 to 10, ₹24,000 for years 11 to 15 and ₹40,000 for years 16 to 20. ₹76,800 in all, of which ₹75,200 remains after the catch-up.

The discount variant. Paying that ₹75,200 balance in advance electronically at the April 2025 renewal turns it into ₹67,680. Total to term: ₹69,280, and the end of the renewal diary for this patent.

What a miss looks like. Say the sixth-year fee, due 11 April 2026, goes unpaid. A Form 4 request buys until 11 October 2026 at ₹480 a month. If nothing is paid by then, the patent has ceased and the eighteen-month restoration window is already partly spent, because it runs from the date the fee fell due, not from the end of the extension.

The six-month extension, precisely

Rule 80(1A): "The period for payment of renewal fees so specified in sub-rule (1) may be extended to such period not being more than six months if the request for such extension of time is made in Form 4 with the fee specified in the First Schedule."

The maximum is six months from the due date, on a Form 4 request filed with the renewal fee. E-filing costs ₹480 per month (Column I) or ₹2,400 per month (Column II); physical filing, ₹530 and ₹2,600. Six months in full comes to ₹2,880 or ₹14,400. It cannot be extended further: Rule 137(2) places Rule 80(1A) outside the Controller's general power to correct irregularities.

One point matters more than the fee. Cessation relates back. Section 53(2) ties cessation to "the expiration of the period prescribed for the payment of any renewal fee" where the fee is not paid within that period or the extended period. On that reading the patent ceased on the original due date, not on the day the extension ran out. So the eighteen-month restoration clock in Section 60 starts at the original due date, and burning the full extension before failing to pay leaves twelve months of restoration window, not eighteen.

Use the extension deliberately rather than by drift. ₹480 a month is cheap. Discovering in month seven that you have spent a third of your restoration window is not.

What "lapsed" actually means

Section 53(2) is blunt. A patent "shall cease to have effect notwithstanding anything therein or in this Act" on the expiration of the prescribed period, if the renewal fee is not paid within that period or the extended period.

Nobody decides this. There is no order, no hearing, no notice of intention. The right ends by operation of law, the Patent Office updates the record, and the cessation is notified in the Office's weekly Official Journal — which is how competitors find out.

Section 53(4) closes the door: on cessation for non-payment, or on expiry of the term, "the subject matter covered by the said patent shall not be entitled to any protection". Anyone may make, use, sell or import the invention without a licence from you, and your own publication is now the prior art that stops you patenting it again.

Letting a patent lapse can be a sound commercial decision, and Section 63 allows a formal surrender instead. What is not a decision is forgetting.

Restoration under Section 60

Restoration is real, it works, and it is narrower than most patentees expect.

The window. Section 60(1) allows the patentee or their legal representative to apply within eighteen months from the date on which the patent ceased to have effect, on Form 15 under Rule 84(1), for ₹2,400 (Column I, e-filing) or ₹12,000 (Column II). Joint patentees may apply through one or more of their number with the Controller's leave. Eighteen months is a hard limit.

What you must show. Section 60(3) requires a verified statement "fully setting out the circumstances which led to the failure to pay the prescribed fee", and the Controller may call for further evidence. Under Section 61(1) he must be prima facie satisfied of two separate things: that the failure to pay was unintentional, and that there has been no undue delay in applying.

Applicants routinely satisfy the first limb and fail the second. Discovering the lapse in month three and applying in month seventeen invites an obvious question. Apply as soon as you find out, and be able to evidence when that was.

Publication and opposition. Where no prima facie case is made out, Rule 84(2) requires the Controller to intimate you, and you then have one month to request a hearing or the application is refused. Where he is prima facie satisfied, Rule 84(3) requires publication. Any person interested may then oppose under Section 61 on two grounds only — that the failure was not unintentional, or that there was undue delay — by notice in Form 14 within two months from publication.

Paying up. Where restoration is allowed, Section 61(3) and Rule 86(1) require the unpaid renewal fees and an additional fee within one month of the order — ₹4,800 (Column I) or ₹24,000 (Column II) on e-filing.

So the minimum government cost of restoring a lapsed Column I patent is ₹7,200 plus every missed annuity, before professional fees; for a Column II patentee, ₹36,000 plus arrears. Against ₹480 a month for a Form 4 extension, the case for docketing makes itself.

Section 62: why restoration does not wind the clock back

Restoration revives the patent. It does not revive it as though nothing happened.

Section 62(1) makes the restored patentee's rights subject to any conditions the Controller thinks fit to impose for the protection or compensation of persons who, between the date the patent ceased and the date the restoration application was published, began to work the invention or took definite steps to do so. A competitor who looked up your patent, saw it had ceased and tooled up a production line in good faith may be permitted to keep going. Restoration cannot simply switch that off.

Section 62(2) goes further, and is worth quoting exactly: "No suit or other proceeding shall be commenced or prosecuted in respect of an infringement of a patent committed between the date on which the patent ceased to have effect and the date of the publication of the application for restoration."

No claim for the gap. Not reduced damages, not an account of profits. No claim at all.

Two consequences. The date that stops the bleeding is the date your restoration application is published, not the date you notice or the date you file. And a restored patent may come back encumbered by a competitor's protected position, which is a materially different asset from the one you had. If it is going into a data room, that belongs in the disclosure schedule.

Form 27 is not a renewal, and there is a deadline this September

Readers conflate the two constantly. Form 27 is the statement of working: your report to the Controller on whether the patented invention has been worked commercially in India. It carries no fee and does nothing to keep the patent alive, but it has its own deadline and its own penalty.

The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2024 substituted Rule 131(2). Statements are now furnished "once in respect of every period of three financial year, starting from the financial year commencing immediately after the financial year in which the patent was granted", within six months from the expiry of each such period. The revised form is far lighter than the old annual one: whether the invention was worked in India, the reason if not, and whether it is available for licensing. The requirements to quantify revenue and itemise licensees are gone.

Following the Controller General's FAQs of 26 August 2024, patents granted on or before 31 March 2023 file their first triennial statement for 2023-24 to 2025-26, due by 30 September 2026. Patents granted in 2023-24 move a year later. Extensions are available and expensive: three months on Form 4 under Rule 131(2) at ₹2,000 per month (₹10,000 for others), then six months under Rule 138 at ₹10,000 per month (₹50,000 for others).

The penalty changed too, and not everyone has noticed. Since the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 took effect for the IP statutes on 1 August 2024, Section 122 no longer carries imprisonment; it is a monetary penalty, adjudicated under machinery built by the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2025. On the figures reported for the amended section, failure to furnish attracts up to ₹1,00,000 plus ₹1,000 for every day it continues, and a false statement attracts up to 0.5 per cent of total sales or turnover, or ₹5 crore, whichever is less. Check the current amounts against the amended section before you rely on them — the direction of travel matters more here than the ceiling.

A guessed Form 27 is now a worse idea than a late one.

Trademarks and designs: the rest of the calendar

Most patentees hold other rights, and the renewal logic differs for each.

Read the design line twice. There is no grace period for the five-year extension. Section 11(2) requires the application before the ten years run out; miss it and the copyright in the design ceases, and you are into restoration under Section 12 rather than a late renewal. Design portfolios lapse more often than patent portfolios for precisely this reason.

The trademark position has a gap in the middle: renewal with surcharge covers the first six months after expiry, while restoration under Section 25(4) is available after six months and within one year. Two applications, not one continuous grace period.

Common mistakes

• Assuming the calendar starts at grant. It starts at the date of the patent, which is the filing date. A patent granted in year five arrives with arrears attached
• Missing the three-month catch-up after recordal. The only renewal deadline that is not an anniversary, and the easiest to lose in the celebration after grant
• Treating the six-month extension as a safety net. It cannot itself be extended, and using it shortens the restoration window that follows
• Paying without quoting the details. Rule 80(2) requires the patent number, the date of the patent and the year being paid for. A payment credited to the wrong year takes months to untangle, and docketing the renewal only with your agent means the diary dies with the retainer
• Waiting to apply for restoration, and assuming it restores everything. Undue delay defeats an application that would have succeeded on the "unintentional" limb, and Section 62 protects the competitor who started work while the patent was dead

How MYCrave can help

Renewals are not intellectually difficult. They are an administrative discipline that fails quietly, and stays invisible until it is expensive. MYCrave Consultancy & Services runs that discipline for 11,000+ clients on its Watchdog IP monitoring, with post-grant work led by a Registered Patent Agent (No. 5509). On a live portfolio that means:

• A portfolio audit — every patent, trademark and design you own, its status, and its renewal calendar rebuilt from the register rather than from memory
• Renewal management across all three rights, including the catch-up window after a late grant and the Form 4 extension where a date has slipped
• Advance-payment planning and Form 27 compliance — which patents justify a prepaid block to capture the Rule 80(3) reduction, and which three-financial-year block your working statement belongs in
• Restoration under Section 60 — the Form 15 statement of circumstances, evidence of when the lapse was found, hearing representation, and defence of a Section 61 opposition
• A check on what happened during the gap, because a Section 62 third-party right is better found by you than by a due diligence team

Where a patent has already ceased, the first task is an honest read of the eighteen-month window and the two Section 61 limbs. Not every lapse is restorable, and it is better to know in week one. See IP management and Watchdog monitoring for how the docket is run.

Put the dates somewhere that outlives the person who set them

The cost of maintaining an Indian patent to term is modest and predictable. The cost of not maintaining it is the whole asset, plus a competitor who may keep the ground they took while you were not looking.

So do three things this month. Build the anniversary list from the date of the patent, not the grant date. Check whether any patent granted in the last nine months still has an unpaid catch-up. And decide, patent by patent, which ones you would still pay ₹8,000 a year for in year 16 — cheaper to decide now than at the deadline.

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