Recipe Maintenance Fees

Recipe: Maintenance-Fee Check

Compute maintenance-fee deadlines for US utility patents and report what is paid, due, and docketable — from official USPTO data, never from memory.

Scope guard — dates and status only. Fee amounts depend on the current USPTO fee schedule and entity status and change over time. Never state dollar amounts; link to https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment and report the entity status found on the record so the user can look up the right column.

Step 1: Applicability guard (run before any computation)

flowleap --json uspto grant <patent-number>        # or: uspto application <app-number>

From applicationMetaData, check the application type first:

• Design or plant patent → answer "this patent type has no maintenance fees" and stop. Utility patents only.
• Reissue → out of scope for computation: maintenance fees follow the ORIGINAL patent's schedule (MPEP 2504). Say so, point at the original patent, and stop.
• Utility → record grantDate, applicationNumberText, and entityStatusData (large/small/micro — determines which fee column applies), then continue.

No grant date (pre-grant application) → there is nothing to compute; say so.

Step 2: Read what was actually paid

flowleap --json uspto transactions <app-number>

Scan the events for:

• Payment events — codes M1551/M1552/M1553 (4th/8th/12th-year, large entity) and M2551/M2552/M2553 (small/micro variants). Record the event date per window.
• Expiry events — descriptions like "Patent Expired for Failure to Pay Maintenance Fees" (code starting EXP). An expiry event ends the analysis: report the lapse and its date.

Required phrasing: a window with no payment event is "no payment event recorded" — never "unpaid." ODP ingestion lags; a fee paid recently may not appear yet.

Step 3: Compute the windows

All dates run from grant date (PTA does not move them):

Ground the rule text rather than asserting it (37 CFR 1.362, MPEP Chapter 2500):

flowleap --json legal search "maintenance fee due dates surcharge" --jurisdiction uspto

If all three windows are past, report historical status only.

Step 4: Report

Per patent, a three-row table — Window | Due | Surcharge until | Status — where Status is one of: paid on <date> (event <code>) / upcoming / in surcharge period / no payment event recorded / lapsed on <date>. Then exactly one action line:

Next action: docket <the nearest unmet deadline>

Portfolio mode: given a list of patents (or hits from flowleap uspto search), run the same check per patent and present one summary table sorted by next deadline, nearest first.

Every response ends with the verification footer:

Computed from USPTO ODP transaction records as of <retrieval date> — verify in USPTO Patent Center before docketing. Fee amounts: USPTO fee schedule (entity status on record: <status>).

Related

• Full prosecution history: flowleap uspto transactions (see flowleap-uspto); single-patent dossier: recipe-patent-to-report.
• Official PTA day counts (term, not fees): flowleap uspto adjustment.