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So what maintenance fees are is that after a patent issues, there are three fees, four years after it issues, eight years after it issues, and 12 years after it issues. And the fees are increasingly higher. The idea of the fee is that if you’re not using it and making money on this and you have no prospect to do that, you’ll give up your patent, you won’t pay the fee.

And what that does is, It then belongs to the public, and that is the government’s purpose in issuing a patent is to eventually get this intellectual property in the hands of the public. So fees do that. The fees actually, comparative to fees around the world, are quite low. In Europe, for example, there are fees every year for the full 20 years.

And if you, for example, start in the United States and then file later. In a foreign country, you already come in with a later higher fee, and they are extremely expensive compared to the United States, but it’s something necessary to keep your patent alive.