Patent applications received during three time periods
Published 1 November 2023
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/patent-applications-received-during-three-time-periods/patent-applications-received-during-three-time-periods
Date of release:
1 February 2021
Information released:
Please could the below information be compiled separately for the three following time frames: Between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018. Between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019. Between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020.
How many patent applications were made to the Intellectual Property Office over this period? How many of these were from businesses? How many of these were from individuals? I am unsure how you record the location of where the applications were sent from, but please could you break down the information to geographical level (local authority name is ideal, but if not county would also be fine- or if in London by borough), and also by type of application (for example, if the innovation was “IT-related”) if time and resources allow under the FOI Act.
Information released:
Please see the attached data for calendar years 2018 and 2019. I regret that we are unable at this time to release similar data for 2020, because that information is exempt from disclosure under section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act, which applies to information intended for future publication. The Intellectual Property Office publishes statistics of patent applications annually in our Facts & Figures report, which is usually available later in the year.
Although section 22 is a ‘qualified’ exemption, which means that we are obliged to consider the balance of public interest in favour or against early disclosure, on balance we feel that the disclosure of data ahead of the publication schedule, would be unfair to other interested parties who would not have the same access to it. Furthermore, we consider it would be desirable to release this information only once it has been properly collated and verified.
We do however publish the headline figures of patent figures, (applications received, published and granted) on a monthly basis. These are currently published up to the end of November 2020, but at the end of this month there will be another release that includes December. Once this is released it will be possible to determine how many applications in total we received in 2020 from within the UK and abroad.
The monthly figures are published on Monthly statistics: Patents, trade marks, and designs: November 2020.
The monthly releases do not drill down into the level of detail you have requested, but later in the year (estimated May, TBC) our Facts and Figures document will contain other, more detailed information that you may find useful. The 2019 report is linked to below for reference, but I should point out that there are some differences in the way the those figures are derived compared to what we have provided for 2019 in the attached tables. For example, in Facts and Figures the more detailed breakdowns are based on information relating to the lead applicant, whereas our attached return provides the breakdowns from all associated applicants (some applications have more than one applicant). We have provided some explanatory notes with the data tables which highlight anything that should be taken into consideration when interpreting this data.
Facts and figures: patent, trade mark, design and hearing data 2019.