The US patent system could be getting a price hike — tech giants could be hit the hardest
President Trump floated a major change to the way America protects private intellectual property rights, which could hit IBM, Apple, Google, and others hard.
Last week, the Trump administration teased an idea that could rewrite how America charges for patents — a move that would significantly boost federal revenue.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Commerce Department officials are weighing a new model that would charge patent holders 1% to 5% of a patent’s overall value each year. The goal? Raise billions of dollars to help reduce the nearly $2 trillion annual national deficit.
If enacted, it would mark a sharp break from the 235-year-old system, where inventors pay a series of fixed fees — typically around a few thousand dollars — regardless of the patent’s “worth.” Under the proposed model, annual fees could balloon for companies with large portfolios of high-value patents, like those in sectors such as semiconductors, AI, or biotech.
Indeed, the largest patent holders are already getting thousands of patents granted every single year.
Over the past decade, America’s patent landscape has been dominated by tech and chip giants like Samsung, TSMC, and Apple. IBM — once the perennial leader, with more than 71,000 patents granted since 2015 — has recently slipped in the ranks after deliberately scaling back its filings to focus on “high-quality” innovation.
A move toward value-based fees could dampen patent filings from these behemoths, as costs would scale with their market potential, while hitting smaller firms even harder, especially those unable to absorb the extra burden.
Meanwhile, the proposal comes as intellectual property revenues are already booming. Last year, the US Patent and Trademark Office collected $4.1 billion in patent and trademark fees — more than 4x what it brought in back in 2000. Unlike most federal agencies, the USPTO is self-funded, running on those fees rather than taxpayer dollars. The potential new model, however, could turn it into a broader revenue source for the government.
And the main challenge would be the math: namely, how do you exactly calculate what a patent is actually worth? Considering that no other country currently ties patent fees to market value, we can’t just borrow someone else’s formula.
