Success rates of non-represented patent applicants
Published 18 December 2024
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-rates-of-non-represented-patent-applicants/success-rates-of-non-represented-patent-applicants
Date of release:
02 February 2023.
Information request:
I would like to request data/statistics in regards to numbers and grant success rates of non-represented patent applicants versus represented patent applicants. Specifically, how many applications per annum are made by individuals or companies not represented by a patent attorney or other professional representative and (if possible) statistics on grant success rates for these self-filed or non-represented applications.
Information released:
Please see attached spreadsheet of aggregated results by year of filing of the given application.
Please note that:
- we have filtered out all cases from consideration that are still undergoing prosecution (i.e. not granted but also not terminated), on the grounds that the success rate of these applications is unknown at present. This will disproportionately affect more recent cases, going back approximately 5 years (possibly with outliers older than this)
- with regards to identification of represented vs non-represented applicants, we do have an internal identifier on each case which indicates this, and this is what has been used to generate the present results. However, this identifier is set manually within the IPO on application receipt and is thus prone to some degree of inaccuracy. For example, sometimes the address for service will be the same as the applicant address, but it is ambiguous as to whether they have a legal department or specific legally-trained employee for handling applications, or whether the applicant is wholly prosecuting the application themselves. Unconventionally-drafted applications can also occasionally be marked as unrepresented even if the applicant is technically represented, and the inverse can also be the case. However, we would estimate the number of the edge cases to be relatively small
- whilst we do have some bibliographic data from the 1980s and earlier, the data becomes steadily incomplete, and the self-represented indicator was not consistently used. I’ve therefore terminated the results at the point in which the results seemed unreliable (late 1980s)