The costs of a review under the American Invents Act include costs of drafting the petition, and the costs that the patent office requires for filling the petition. It also includes the cost of the motion practice and discovery that follows. The costs of these petitions is driven largely by the complexity of the challenges, and the number of challenges that are lodged.

For example, you may have a patent to challenge that has relatively few claims. They may involve prior arguments that are relatively simple. Those petitions will cost less, naturally. In other cases, there may be a very dense number of claims, or the claims may cover a very complex subject matter in which case more fact-finding and discovery may be required, and the initially patent search that’s done to perform these post-grant challenges will be more complicated and take more time.

Don’t forget, too, you frequently want to rely on expert testimony to support these petitions. In those cases, the cost of hiring and retaining the expert can vary depending on the scope of the challenge made.