The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has reduced the number of free claims per patent application and increased related fees effective September 1, 2025.

IPOS lowered the number of free claims from 20 to 15. Meanwhile, excess claim fees have risen from S$40 (US$31) to S$80 (US$62) while renewal fees have increased by around 7 percent.

“The reason given for the change was ‘to encourage submission of concise claim sets,’ and if you look at it from IPOS’s perspective, the changes seem justified,” said Daniel Poh, office managing partner at Marks & Clerk in Singapore. He related that IPOS has been besieged with examination backlogs for the past few years. Less claims mean faster processing, while more claims translate to a heavier workload for the examiners. However, Poh said this is compensated by the higher fees.

However, he also said the increase in excess claim fees appears too drastic to patent applicants. “Perhaps the view by IPOS was that if the increase was too little, then it would not serve its purpose. But will it have the desired effect?” asked Poh. “Not sure – likely due to attorney fees or professional fees for filing voluntary claim amendments.”

In the case of patent applications with a large number of claims, which are common in pharma and biotech inventions, some of which have claims numbering 50, it could be natural for the applicant to reduce the claims to only 15. Doing so will make the applicant avoid paying the excess claim fees. According to Poh, things remain cost-efficient even with the attorney fee for filing amendments.

“Yet, if you look at the situation more generally, the largest patent filers in Singapore for the past several years have been U.S. applicants, and they tend to use the 20-claim limit as the yardstick, which is the claim threshold for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to avoid excess claim fees,” Poh revealed. “If you factor in the attorney fee to file voluntary amendments to reduce the number of claims from 20 to 15 claims, this may not justify reducing the number of claims, and such applicants may just decide to pay the excess claim fees and stick with 20 claims. Thus, if the main purpose of the changes was to target this group of applicants, then it may not achieve the desired effect, but I guess the examiners would now be compensated by the excess claim fees.”

- Espie Angelica A. de Leon