Taking part in our patents pilot
We’re piloting our new digital patents service for a small number of customers. This guidance explains how you can get involved.
What is the patents pilot?
The pilot or ‘private beta’ stage is where we bring a small number of customers onto the service to help us test, refine and improve it. This is a fundamental part of the development process that will allow us to build a great service for our customers.
Here are five reasons it’s so important for you to take part in the pilot:
- Hit the ground running – get early access to see how everything works and share knowledge with your colleagues.
- A chance to shape and influence – your feedback will guide us on where we need to make improvements.
- Work with us – put the service through its paces to make sure it’s working as you’d expect.
- Tell us what should come next – let us know which features are most important to you and what we should build next.
- Stay in the loop – be the first to get updates on where we are and how the new service is progressing.
How can I get involved?
We’ve already had over 50 customers sign up to take part in the pilot, and we’d love to have more! If you want to take part, you can express an interest in joining by emailing pilot@ipo.gov.uk.
We want to test with all the different types of customers who use our services, from attorney firms to lone inventors. So, whether you’re a patents veteran or new to all this, we’d love for you to take part.
What am I signing up to?
As a pilot customer you decide how much you want to use the new service. You can keep using our existing services as a pilot customer. If there’s something we want you to try out, we’ll ask for your help, but ultimately the decision is yours.
The pilot will run for at least six months, but you don’t have to join on day one. We’ll keep adding more customers as the pilot progresses.
We are starting very small with limited transaction volumes and numbers of people on the pilot. We will be increasing the numbers of people on the pilot and the number of transactions as the pilot progresses.
Is there anything else I should know?
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the pilot is currently for patents only. We will be working on new digital services for trade marks and designs in the future, just not yet
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it could be a few months before you’re invited to join the pilot. We’re gradually adding more users and features as we go. We’ll keep you updated on progress
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if you or your firm already file patents with us we’ll have to work with you to clean up the patents data we hold for you before you join the pilot. This could take a while depending on how complex your data is
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we want to add a small number of people from your firm - we’ll let you know if we already have other people from your firm on the pilot
If you have any questions about the pilot, please email pilot@ipo.gov.uk.