DID WE MENTION CURRENCY?
Maintenance costs are a significant part of any IP holder’s budget. Ironically, many companies spend considerable resources optimizing drafting and prosecution costs to reduce spend. But they have no idea what their currency costs for maintenance payments are, which opens them up to tens or hundreds of thousands in potential overspending.
DON'T GET PLAYED
IP payments can be complex – payments are impacted by changing currency rates and a web of international laws and fees. Some vendors leverage this complexity to play a patent currency cost game and cloak costs in secrecy and inflate charges that can add up substantially for IP owners. If you don’t know your patent currency costs, you are probably paying too much.
3 TIPS TO WIN THE PATENT CURRENCY COST GAME
- Get your annuity vendor to clearly identify your currency costs on your invoice.
- Regularly spot-check invoices. Looking at just one case can identify systemic overcharges.
- If you can pay your vendor in two currencies – do. It can save you hundreds of thousands in FX fees.
How To Spot Check and Invoice In 5 Minutes
You can spot-check your invoices for free, it only takes a few minutes. Here is the three-step process:
- Find a payment in a country that doesn’t require an agent. Germany is a great country. Locate what you paid and subtract your service fee.
- Find the PTO fee for your payment. For Germany, go here to find your fee in Euros.
- Convert the Euro fee into your currency and compare with your invoice. You can use OANDA to convert the fee using the date of your invoice.
It can be difficult to find time to spot-check invoices, plus it requires some level of expertise. We designed our IP Invoice Review Service to make it easy for you to hand off the responsibilities of reviewing invoices. All you need to worry about is how you will spend the savings!
