As a reminder some PCT search fees will change today for US PCT filers.
The ISA/EP fee will drop 5.3%, to $1992. As of today, for the first time in thirty-eight years, this will be cheaper than ISA/US (for large entities).
The ISA/KR fee will drop 5.4%, to $1114. As before, the real bargain at ISA/KR is the cost of the second through nth inventions will still only cost a couple of hundred dollars each.
The ISA/JP fee will drop 10.7%, to $1372.
The ISA/IL fee will drop 2.8%, to $911.
For a filer that counts the search fee price as a big factor in the selection of searching authority, these fee changes leave roughly unchanged the ranking of searching authorities by cost.
For a filer that uses EFS-Web or ePCT as the mechanism for e-filing of a PCT application, you do not need to worry about accidentally paying the wrong fee, because the e-filing system will automatically quote the correct fee.
There are still many other factors which might influence an applicant’s selection of International Searching Authority, as I summarize here.