Singapore Intellectual Property Blog

Dr Chong-Yee Khoo of Cantab IP will attend the FICPI World Congress 2025 in Naples, with a focus on patent firm management and reconnecting with the city.

Cantab IP will attend the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA) 2025 Conference in Kuala Lumpur this November, a key event for patents, trade marks and IP enforcement across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

TL;DR IPOS has now introduced a general acceleration programme for fast-tracking patent applications in Singapore

As some readers may be aware, we have recently been experiencing a significant backlog in examination of patent applications at the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS).

In the good old days, we would typically expect an office action (whether a Written Opinion or more rarely a Notice of Intention to Grant) to issue within 3-6 months of requesting examination on a Singapore patent application. Nowadays, it is not unusual for a year or two to pass before IPOS even acknowledges that examination has been requested.

We and others in the profession, including the Association of Singapore Patent Attorneys (ASPA, where I sit on the executive committee) have discussed this issue at length with IPOS. The Singapore Patent Office, to its credit, has recently started recruiting and training patent examiners. It is clear, however, that it will be a few years before these trainee examiners can be considered fully fit to undertake the challenging jobs of examining patent applications in Singapore.

Meanwhile, IPOS has been looking at other ways to solve this problem.

The good news is that applicants pursuing patent applications in Singapore now have an opportunity to “fast track” their cases before IPOS. Thus, the recently announced revised “FAST” programme at IPOS now allows search and examination of patent applications to be accelerated.

The not so good news is the significant additional official fees that are required to get an application into the programme.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore will implement major revisions to the official fees payable for patents, trade marks, registered designs and plant varieties matters at the Singapore IP office from Q3 2025. This was announced in IPOS Circular No. 3/2025 of 21 July 2025.

The changes are generally effective 1 September 2025, with some changes taking effect on 1 April 2026.

This post deals with the impact on trade marks and trade mark applications, registered designs and registered designs applications as well as plant variety protection applications. For patents, please see the blog post “IPOS Official Fee Increases (Patents) 2025”.

Please contact us if you would like more information on the fee changes, or if you have any questions.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore will implement major revisions to the official fees payable for patents, trade marks, registered designs and plant varieties matters at the Singapore IP office from Q3 2025. This was announced in IPOS Circular No. 3/2025 of 21 July 2025.

The changes are generally effective 1 September 2025, with some changes taking effect on 1 April 2026.

This post deals only with the impact on patents and patent applications. Further details are set out in the Annex. We have also written a post explaining how to calculate excess claims fees. For trade marks, registered designs and plant varieties, please see the blog post IPOS Official Fee Increases 2025 (Trade Marks, Registered Designs and Plant Varieties).

Please contact us if you would like more information on the fee changes, or if you have any questions.