Corporate report

One IPO Transformation Prospectus

Updated 21 April 2022

April 2022 update

The IPO is now a year into its transformation journey, and we’re getting closer to our goal of delivering excellent IP services.

Over the last 12 months we’ve been asking customers to take part in our user research to help shape our future services. Over 100 customers, including attorneys, in-house IP professionals and small business owners have taken part in research and testing which has given us invaluable insight into what our customers will need from the service. We’re going to continue our research and testing into 2022 and beyond. Join our user research panel if you’d like to take part.

Using this research, we’ve developed, tested and shared early designs of our Manage IP service, which will introduce a customer account where you will be able to manage all of your IP in one place. We’re also building early designs of Secure IP, the new IP application, registration and granting service. Finally, we’ve kicked off the Research IP project, which will provide new tools to help customers search and analyse IP.

Over the next couple of years we’ll be doing the hard graft of building our new services, before inviting some customers onto the new patents service in late 2023. We will also consult on changes to IP legislation that are necessary to allow us to truly transform our services.

Why are we transforming?

From our Minister

Intellectual Property (IP) is essential to the UK’s innovative and creative economies. IP is the fuel of innovation and creativity. But for the UK to be a powerhouse of innovation, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) too must innovate.

The IPO’s ‘One IPO’ Transformation Programme will deliver fast, flexible and high quality digital services, and remove barriers to innovation. By renewing every aspect of its work the IPO will make IP rights more accessible and useful. The programme will reimagine the IPO’s services for the digital age, ensuring that Britain’s IP system remains a powerful enabler for enterprise.

By providing businesses and citizens with the tools they need to harness the power of IP we can incentivise investment, safe-guard assets and enable knowledge sharing. Through improved use of IP, we will enable Britain to forge an unbeatable competitive advantage and create firm foundations for sustainable economic growth.

From our CEO

At the IPO our strategic ambition is to be the best IP office in the world. We know that our customers value our first-class culture and customer service, which already sets us apart. However, we also know that we do not meet our goal of excellent IP services, and our customers rightly expect more as the world we live in becomes increasingly digital by default.

Our transformation programme is our pledge to up our game – to deliver excellent IP services that meet the needs of our customers. To achieve that we will not replicate what we do now, but completely transform the way we deliver services. This will not only result in more modern, flexible, digital services, but also opportunities to explore new services to help our customers protect, research and use their IP more effectively, reinforcing the UK’s place as a global innovation and IP leader.

We know that helping our customers helps the UK economy, and we are passionate about playing our part to help both build back better.

One IPO Transformation vision

Our One IPO Transformation will not just modernise and recreate our current processes, systems and services. We will completely transform what we do, the way we do it and the value we add as an organisation to the UK economy. We will be more effective, not just more efficient.

One IPO Transformation objectives

Delivering the best tools to enable our people to excel We will provide our people with the best tools, systems, opportunities and support, so that our people can excel in a modern working environment.

Providing outstanding, customer-focussed services We will provide fast, flexible, high quality services which give our customers a seamless experience across different IP rights.

Unleashing the power of our data to help drive economic growth Our partners and customers will use our data to identify and exploit opportunities for innovation and to grow their businesses.

Enabling and accelerating UK innovation We will attract new innovators and businesses to the UK by promoting and increasing the advantages of the UK IP environment for innovation.

Being global IP leaders We will be an outward facing, collaborative organisation and a leading voice and influence in the world IP environment. The IPO will make it easier for our UK customers to protect and benefit from their IP internationally.

What can you expect from IPO’s transformation?

To give you a flavour of what you can expect, here are six benefits that we will deliver to customers through our transformation. All of them are based on customer feedback.

1. Access, view and manage all of your IP in one place
   You will be able to access all IPO’s services through one system, and seamlessly manage all of your IP rights in one place.

2. Our new and transformed services will be fully digital, quicker and easier to use
   Our services will be completely paper-free and provide the features and convenience that you would expect from a modern digital service. We will continue to conduct rigorous quality checks to ensure that registered IP rights remain of a high quality.
   

3. Improved guidance and collaboration features
   We will build on our strong reputation for excellent customer service, by providing improved guidance to help customers find the right information first time. We’ll harness new technology to give you more options for how you want to collaborate with us on your applications.

4. Powerful search and analysis tools to help you research IP
   Our data will be opened up so researchers, businesses and inventors can learn from and build upon the UK’s brightest ideas.

When will this happen and how long will it take?

Patents - 2024

We will start to build a single, integrated system for all IP rights (patents, trade marks and designs). Patents will be added to this system and be available to everyone by spring 2024.

Trade marks - 2025

Trade marks will be added to the One IPO system in 2025.

Designs - 2026

Designs will be added to the One IPO system in 2026.

Become the best IP office (2026 and beyond)

We will listen to customers and staff to deliver ongoing improvements and excellent IP services. We will be the best IP office in the world - constantly evolving and keeping the UK at the forefront of innovation through the world’s best IP framework.

How are we transforming?

IPO has always had completely separate systems, processes and services for different IP rights - patents, trade marks and designs. In future, we want our services to be designed around customer needs.

To work out how we would transform our services, we went back to the drawing board. Drawing upon a vast amount of customer research, we redesigned our services around customer needs from the ground up. Instead of building our services around separate IP rights (patents, trade marks and designs), our future services will be focused around the key tasks our customers need to perform.

Our future services will be:

• Manage IP - manage all of your IP through a customer account.
• Secure IP - do everything involved in securing IP rights, from application through to grant or registration.
• Research IP - search, analyse or gather IP insights.
• Challenge IP - significantly improved hearings and tribunals service.

What have we achieved so far?

Manage IP

We’ve made the most progress with Manage IP, because that’s what we started working on first. We’ve spoken to around 100 customers to understand what they need from a customer account and test our thinking. We’ve shared early designs of the service covering:

• the registration process and linking IP rights to your account
• the account dashboard or homepage which will be the gateway to your account services
• the new digital change of ownerships service
• the change of representative service

The next step is to start building all of this for real. The designs we have shared so far have only been surface level – a series of screen which aren’t linked to any real, functioning systems. From April we started the process of building the system, while continuing to refine and improve the designs. To learn more about Manage IP, take a look at this blog from Manage IP Project Lead, Chris Mitchell.

Secure IP

Like Manage IP we’ve done a lot of research to help shape our thinking. We’re currently in the process of developing an early design for the new IP application service.

Research IP

The Research IP project started in March 2022 and is starting its research phase to understand what customers need from the service.

Challenge IP

Work on Challenge IP hasn’t started yet, but will get underway in June 2022.

What will happen next?

Until October 2023, we will be working on the Manage, Secure, Research and Challenge services which are the foundation of the new One IPO service. These services will be used across patents, trade marks and designs. The timeline shows how we expect this work to progress.

Once that work has been completed, we will start working to move patents, trade marks and designs onto the One IPO service.

How can you get involved?

We still want to hear from customers who want to take part in our research and testing. If you’d like to take part please contact usertesting@ipo.gov.uk to register your interest.

We’ll be exploring more about our customers to understand what they’re trying to achieve when they use our services and how they go about using our services. By getting an accurate image of who our customers are, it means we’re more likely to be successful in building a system or service that meets the needs of our users.

If you have any questions about our transformation in the meantime you can contact information@ipo.gov.uk.