A European application which contains more than ten claims at the time of filing the claims (see the paragraph below) incurs payment of a claims fee in respect of each claim over and above that number. The claims' order is their sequence at their time of filing. If an application contains more than one set of claims, Rule 45 is only applicable for the set of claims containing the highest number of claims (see Legal Advice No. 3/85 rev., OJ 11/1985, 347). The claims fees must be paid within one month after the claims are filed.

The claims may be filed at the following stages:

Consequently, the claims fees must be paid within one month of whichever of the above dates of receipt applies.

If the claims fees have not been paid in due time, they may still be validly paid within a non-extendable period of grace of one month of notification of a communication pointing out the failure to observe the time limit. If a claims fee is not paid within the period of grace, the claim concerned is deemed to be abandoned and the applicant is notified to that effect. If the claims fees paid are insufficient to cover all the claims incurring fees (i.e. claim no. 11 onwards), and if when payment was made no indication was given as to which claims were covered by the fees paid, then the applicant is requested to specify which claims incurring fees are covered by the claims fees paid. The Receiving Section notifies the Search Division of claims that are deemed abandoned. Any claims fee duly paid is refunded only in the case referred to in Rule 37(2) (see II, 3.2, last paragraph).

In cases where:

the claims fees are due within one month of the filing date (since the claims of the previous application are effectively present on the European filing date). However, the EPO will not send the applicant a communication under Rule 45(2) inviting him to pay any claims fees due, until the applicant has filed the copy of the previous application, within two months of the filing date (Rule 40(3)), since it is only at this point that the EPO will know how many claims there are and consequently, how many claims fees, if any, are due.

Features of a claim deemed to have been abandoned pursuant to Rule 45(3) and which are not otherwise to be found in the description or drawings cannot subsequently be reintroduced into the application and, in particular, into the claims (J 15/88, OJ 11/1990, 445).

Regarding Euro-PCT applications entering the European phase, see VII, 1.3 and 3.8.