Transformation update July 2022
Transformation update: firing on all cylinders / everything changes, everything stays the same.
IPO is entering a new era as we’ve just appointed a new Interim CEO and Deputy CEO. That goes for our digital services too, as we start the process of building brand new services, with the new patents service now less than two years away from launching.
Some things aren’t changing though. Our One IPO Transformation Programme remains our number one priority and will continue as planned. The programme is still on track, with patents coming in 2024, trade marks in 2025 and designs in 2026. In fact, all of our initial transformation projects – Manage IP, Secure IP, Research IP and Challenge IP are now up and running. Below is a brief update on where we are with each of those.
Manage IP
Manage IP is the new IPO customer account, where you’ll be able to manage all of your IP in one place. In March we shared more information and early designs of the Manage IP service, including the account registration process, the account dashboard and the change of IP ownership process. Since then, we have:
- continued to develop and improve the parts of the service we’ve already shared, based on customer feedback
- explored how we’ll bring customers onto the new service and how we’ll help them to link their account to their IP rights
- finished the core designs of the service and are now looking at how we handle some of the less common cases, or where things aren’t straight-forward
- moved out of the prototyping phase and starting to build the service on the technology we’ll be using for all our new services
Secure IP
Secure IP is the new IP application service. Today, we’ve published a blog from Secure IP Project Lead, Emma Ford, who shares further information on our new application service, and some early designs of what it will look like.
The secure IP service will provide:
- the same experience across all rights, as much as possible
- a more flexible application service that will allow you can skip the parts of the application that don’t apply to you
- a smarter application service that will reduce errors and inefficiency by checking the application and stopping errors before they are filed
- a quicker and easier application service that will reuse information from your customer account and business data from elsewhere (eg Companies House)
- improved guidance and automatic notifications
We plan to start building the Secure IP service on our new tech in July.
Research IP
Research IP will provide new tools to help you search and analyse IP. It will make it much easier for customers to find and analyse information about UK IP rights. We have just finished our initial research for this project, with 77 customers taking part.
Customers told us that the problems with the current service are:
- a lack of consistency when searching across registered IP rights
- the search functionality is very limited
- it’s difficult to interpret results and gain valuable insights from our data
In response, some of the things we’re exploring for the Research IP service are:
- one register for all IP rights
- providing better search, filtering and data visualisation options
- the ability to monitor and track certain IP rights
Challenge IP
In June we started building the last of our four new services – Challenge IP. Challenge IP is a new digital service for challenging IP rights through hearings or tribunals. This is the first time we have ever offered a digital service for hearings and tribunals.
We still want to hear from you
It’s still vital that we hear from you as we continue to design, test and build our new services. We have just started our latest round of research and want to hear from you. To take part email usertesting@ipo.gov.uk.