You cannot renew a U.S. patent. Once the term ends, the invention enters the public domain and anyone can make, use, or sell it without permission.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 U.S. Code 154 – Contents and Term of Patent; Provisional Rights What you can do is keep the patent alive for its full statutory term by paying maintenance fees on time, and in narrow circumstances add days or years to the expiration date through adjustments and extensions built into the law. None of these are renewals. They are ways to protect the term you already have.
How Long a Patent Lasts
The term depends on the type of patent. Utility patents cover new and useful processes, machines, and compositions of matter, and they last 20 years from the U.S. filing date.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 U.S. Code 154 – Contents and Term of Patent; Provisional Rights Plant patents follow the same 20-year rule.2United States Patent and Trademark Office. General Information About 35 USC 161 Plant Patents Design patents, which protect ornamental appearance rather than function, last 15 years from the grant date.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 USC 173 – Term of Design Patent
Design and plant patents run their full term with no further payments required.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 U.S. Code 41 – Patent Fees; Patent and Trademark Search Systems Utility patents do not. Miss a required payment and the patent expires before its 20 years are up.
Maintenance Fees Keep a Utility Patent Alive
If you own a utility patent, this is the closest thing to a renewal you will encounter. The USPTO requires three maintenance fee payments after grant, due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years. The amounts rise with each installment. Under the March 2026 fee schedule, large entity fees are $2,150 at 3.5 years, $4,040 at 7.5 years, and $8,280 at 11.5 years.5United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Fee Schedule – Current Skip any one and the patent expires.
Smaller filers pay less. Small entities, generally businesses with fewer than 500 employees, get a 60% discount. Micro entities, which include individuals and small businesses that meet income limits, get 80% off.6United States Patent and Trademark Office. Maintain Your Patent Micro entity status on the gross income basis requires each applicant, inventor, and owner to have gross income below $251,190 as of September 2025, a figure updated annually.7United States Patent and Trademark Office. Micro Entity Status
Each fee has a six-month window before the due date when you can pay without a surcharge. Miss that, and a six-month grace period lets you pay late with a $540 surcharge, or $216 for small entities and $108 for micro entities.5United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Fee Schedule – Current Miss both, and the patent lapses.
Bringing Back a Patent That Already Lapsed
A lapsed patent is not automatically gone forever. The USPTO can reinstate one through a petition, but only if you can show the delay in paying was unintentional.8United States Patent and Trademark Office. Acceptance of Delayed Payment of Maintenance Fee in Expired Patent to Reinstate Patent
You have to submit the overdue maintenance fee, a petition fee, and a statement that the delay was unintentional. The petition fee for a large entity is $2,260 if the delay is two years or less and $3,000 if the delay is longer.9United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Fee Schedule Petitions filed more than two years after expiration must include a detailed explanation of what happened, not just a boilerplate statement.10eCFR. 37 CFR 1.378 – Acceptance of Delayed Payment of Maintenance Fee in Expired Patent to Reinstate Patent
If the USPTO grants the petition, the patent is treated as if it never expired. There is one important catch. Anyone who started making or selling the invention during the lapse may have intervening rights that let them continue. Reinstatement works, but it is not risk-free, and calendar reminders are much cheaper than the petition process.
Ways to Add Time to a Patent Term
Two mechanisms can push the expiration date later than 20 years from filing. Neither is a renewal. Both compensate for time you effectively lost.
Patent Term Adjustment
Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) adds days to a utility or plant patent’s term to make up for delays the USPTO caused during examination. It was created by the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999.11United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent Term Guarantee Overview The USPTO tracks three delay categories, then subtracts any delay you caused by filing responses late, requesting extensions, or abandoning and reviving the application.12United States Patent and Trademark Office. 2732 Reduction of Period of Adjustment of Patent Term The final number appears on the face of the patent.
Verify the calculation when your patent issues. Errors are not rare, and the window to contest is limited.
Patent Term Extension for FDA-Regulated Products
Drug companies and medical device makers face a problem PTA does not fix. Years of the 20-year clock can run out while the product waits for FDA approval. The Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 created patent term extensions (PTE) to offset that lost time.13United States Patent and Trademark Office. 2750 Patent Term Extension for Delays at Other Agencies Under 35 USC 156
PTE covers patents on human drugs, medical devices, food and color additives, animal drugs, and veterinary biological products. To qualify:
- The patent must still be in force when the extension application is filed.
- The patent has never been extended under this provision before.
- The product must be receiving its first regulatory approval for commercial marketing.
- The application must be filed within 60 days of the product receiving FDA or USDA approval.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 USC 156 – Extension of Patent Term
Two caps apply. The extension cannot exceed five years, and the remaining patent term after FDA approval plus the extension cannot exceed 14 years from the date of approval.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 USC 156 – Extension of Patent Term A drug with a very long regulatory review might still not recover all its lost time. The 60-day filing deadline is unforgiving. There is no grace period.
What Continuations and Reissues Actually Do
Several other tools are sometimes mistaken for ways to extend or renew a patent. They are not.
A continuation application lets you pursue new claim language based on the same invention disclosure as an earlier application, which is useful when an examiner rejected your original claims or when competitors are designing around them.15United States Patent and Trademark Office. 201 Types of Applications – Section: 201.07 Continuation Application The resulting patent still expires 20 years from the earliest parent application’s filing date.16United States Patent and Trademark Office. 2701 Patent Term A continuation filed on a 2020 application and granted in 2028 expires in 2040, not 2048. You must file while the parent is still pending, and if the claims overlap significantly with the parent patent, the USPTO will typically require a terminal disclaimer that ties the two expiration dates together.17United States Patent and Trademark Office. 1490 Disclaimers
A divisional application carves out a separate invention that was disclosed in the parent but could not be claimed alongside the original, usually because the USPTO issued a restriction requirement.18United States Patent and Trademark Office. 201 Types of Applications A continuation-in-part adds new subject matter, but any claims that rely on the new material get only the CIP’s own filing date for prior art purposes. Neither adds term.
A reissue application fixes errors in a granted patent, such as claims that are too broad or too narrow, a defective specification, or drawing mistakes. The reissued patent covers only the unexpired portion of the original term. To broaden claims through reissue, you must file within two years of the original grant date. After that, narrowing and other corrections are still possible; broadening is not.19Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 USC 251 – Reissue of Defective Patents Anyone who started making or selling a product that infringes the broadened claims before the reissue was granted may have intervening rights protecting their continued use.20Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 35 U.S. Code 252 – Effect of Reissue
Once the Term Ends, It Ends
After the full term expires, including any adjustments or extensions, the invention enters the public domain permanently. U.S. patent law has no mechanism to re-patent the same invention or reclaim exclusivity. Anyone can freely manufacture, sell, or use it.
Because there is no way back, the strategy for getting the most out of a patent is front-loaded. File continuation applications while the parent is pending. Apply for PTE within the 60-day window if your product is FDA-regulated. Verify the PTA calculation when the patent issues. And do not miss a maintenance fee deadline. Every one of these tools has a filing window, and most of those windows cannot be reopened.