更新

For an Australian patent application to proceed to grant an acceptance fee has to be paid, which covers the first 20 claims of the application.
If an application contains more than 20 claims, an additional fee of AU$ 100 has to be paid for each additional claim.
Currently, in order to avoid paying said additional fee, the applicant can choose to only prosecute the first 20 claims to acceptance and later make post-acceptance amendments to add the remaining claims when were originally excluded.

As from 1^st August 2010, the Australian Patent Office has proposed an amendment to the fee schedule, meaning that from said date claims added with post-acceptance amendments, if the total number exceeds 20, will still be subject to the additional claims fee, for each claim, of AU$ 100.