Legal fees are established by the Act on Legal Fees No. 71/1992, Digest of Laws. In the general part of this Act the following subjects are treated: legal fees, payers, exemption from legal fees, occurrence and cessation of payment duty, etc. A separate part of the Act, the Scale of Legal Fees, establishes particular amounts chargeable as fees. Considering enforcement of intellectual property rights, the second item is especially important, as long as it deals with actions concerning patents, inventions, industrial designs, layout-designs, topographies of semiconductor products as well as with copyright and other related rights. Legal fees here account for 4% of the price of the chose in action, the minimum being Sk 500, and the maximum Sk 500 000. In case the chose in action cannot be financially valued (e.g. in action for determination whether there exists any law at all), the legal fee is then established as Sk 2 000. Trade name rights actions, trademark actions and label of origin actions are regulated by Item 3 of the Scale of Legal Fees, all of these actions requiring a charge of Sk3 000. Legal fees are due as soon as the action is filed and also when a party is appealing against a decision.
Administrative fees, that is the fees due for acts of administrative proceedings, are generally regulated by the Act on Administrative Fees No. 145/1995, Digest of Laws. As well as the Act on Legal Fees, this Act consists of two parts in its general part it treats the subject of administrative fees, of payers, of the occurrence of payment duty, etc. Its second part establishes legal fees according to specific legal acts. From the point of view of enforcement of intellectual property rights, Part XVI of the Scale of Legal Fees is especially important, as it establishes fees for acts in enforcement proceedings before the Slovak Industrial Property Office. As examples we cite here a few of the most important items: patent application – Sk 800, request for patent examining procedure up to 10 claims – Sk 2 500, patent deed up to 10 pages – Sk 2 000, extending the patent life, the third, the fourth and the fifth year, total – Sk 5 000, the sixth year – Sk 1 700, lay out design application – Sk 700, industrial design application – Sk 600, topography of semiconductor products application – Sk 5 000, trademark application up to 3 segments of products or services – Sk 3 000, request for erasure of a trademark from the register of trademarks – Sk 600, request for a renewal of trademark registration – Sk 2 500, application for label of origin – Sk 2 000.
Legal and administrative fees are established in relevant Acts in the Digest of Laws and thus are fully available to public. Please refer to the relevant passages of both Acts set out in the Annex.
