USPTO to add surcharge on non-DOCX patent applications in 2023

I don't think you submitted the link you wanted to.

I see https://unblock.federalregister.gov/ which doesn't take me anywhere useful.

In case anyone is looking for the size of the surcharge, I found it in the last row of this table: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-16559/p-555

I've been working on some tools that integrate with USPTO (both from the application side and the validation side) for quite a few years now and they've been making a TON of formatting changes recently. A lot of their PDF forms have changed, they're requiring XML versions of all data we submit, they're handling classifications differently, etc. Their process always felt like it was stuck in the past and being handled manually by humans before and now it feels like they're moving everything toward automated intake and initial reviews. I imagine this change is for the same reasons, and that's a hefty fee to force it.

This also likely means I will need to rework our systems to spit out docx instead of/in addition to PDFs, which will be a nightmare to do. So that's fun.

It looks like most of those translate to "We build our automated systems around DOCX so you get all our features if you use it".

But it doesn't really say why they chose to build on docx.

So, $100-400 depending on the size (CFR section 1.16(u)). That feels... excessive, but if processing a DOCX is automatic and PDFs require humans (I'm assuming), it makes sense.