Transformation update: two years till the new patents service
An update on our One IPO Transformation Programme as our work continues to gather pace.
It’s 2022 and we’re now a little over two years away from launching our new patents service, with trade marks following in 2025 and designs in 2026. The first step of our transformation is to build the core services that will be used across patents, trade marks and designs. Over the last few months we’ve been working on the first two of these, Manage IP and Secure IP.
Manage IP
Manage IP will allow you to view and manage all of your IP through a customer account. We’ve been building and testing early designs of some of the most challenging parts of the service. So far we’ve made early designs for:
- the ‘dashboard’ of services that you can access from your account
- the initial registration process and linking IP rights to your account
- the ‘change of owner’ process, where you can transfer ownership of IP rights to other accounts
To find out more about the customer accounts, and see video demos of what we’ve been working on, take a look at the Manage IP Project blog from Chris Mitchell - Project Lead.
Secure IP
Secure IP is where you can do everything involved in securing your IP rights, from application through to grant or registration. We completed our initial research in December and will start building early designs of the service in the coming weeks. We expect our Secure IP service to give you the following benefits:
1. The same experience across all rights - want to align the application process across patents, trade marks and designs as much as possible
2. Providing the services you need - some customers have to shoehorn our services to meet their needs. In future, we want to offer a wider range of services which offer more flexibility. If you only want to, for example, apply for a filing date, there should be a service specifically designed for that.
3. More effective services - we want to help customers submit better quality applications to reduce errors and increase efficiency. We could do this through:
- validation rules - checks built into forms to reduce errors
- consistent high quality formats for supporting documentation
- re-use business data from elsewhere (eg Companies House)
- ensure image files are searchable
- artificial intelligence to help customers with applications
4. Guidance and communication - our customers don’t always apply for the correct IP rights, because our guidance isn’t clear enough. To address this we will explore:
- reviewing guidance to ensure it’s clear and easy to find
- building guidance into the application process
- look at alternative guidance methods - videos, live chat etc
- real-time notifications and status updates
5. Access IPO services your way - look to develop a tool that allows attorneys to access IPO services through the IP software they already use.
What’s next?
Over the next few months we’ll:
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Manage IP - we’ll build and early design for how you will share access to your IP rights with others and how you will change your account details
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Secure IP - we’ll start building our early designs of the service, covering the key points described above
- Research IP - we’ll begin investigating the tools you need to search, research and analyse UK IP
How you can help
It’s vitally important that you shape these services, not us. We urgently need you to take part in our user research to give us feedback on what we’re building and shape its direction. We only need 90 mins of your time. You can sign up to take part by emailing usertesting@ipo.gov.uk.
Alternatively, if you just want to be kept up to date, sign up for our transformation updates by emailing transformation@ipo.gov.uk.