A category defined for reduced fees. To qualify as a microentity, the following conditions must be satisfied individually for each applicant, inventor, and joint inventor who:
- has not been named as an inventor on more than four (4) prior patent applications (provisional applications, patent applications filed in a foreign country, PCT international applications for which the basic US national fee was not paid, and applications that a party has assigned or is under an obligation to assign as a result of previous employment do not count);
- has gross income less than 3 times the median household income in the U.S. for the preceding calendar year
- has not assigned, licensed, or otherwise granted an interest in the invention to an entity that has gross income more than the amount listed above (unless the entity relates to an institution of higher education); and
- also meets the requirement for small entity status.
