The Patent Office Innovation and Growth Report 2024/25 HTML
Published 14 July 2025
© Crown copyright 2025
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The Patent Office Innovation and Growth Report
For the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 21 of the Intellectual Property Act 2014
July 2025
© Crown copyright 2025
ISBN: 978-1-5286-5752-5
E-Number: E03369058
Introduction
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has a statutory duty under section 21 of the Intellectual Property Act 2014 to lay before Parliament an annual report on how its activities have contributed to the promotion of innovation and economic growth in the UK.
Intellectual property (IP) plays a crucial role in our lives and our economy. It encourages innovation in the UK by giving confidence to businesses, investors and creators to create new ideas, products and technologies, knowing their IP can be protected. This is vital to accelerating innovation, supporting UK businesses and unlocking the potential of our creative industries.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) ranks the UK as the world’s fifth most innovative economy. The UK is ranked second in the US Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center’s International IP Index 2025.
As an executive agency of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), we will make sure that IP is an important enabler for economic growth and supports further investment and advancements in science, technology, innovation and creativity.
In the future, we will explore better integrating and aligning this document into our wider annual reporting to present a comprehensive account of both our organisational performance and contribution to innovation and growth.
The role of the Intellectual Property Office
The IPO is an executive agency and trading fund, sponsored by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). We are responsible for the UK’s IP framework including the patents, trade marks, designs and copyright systems.
Our journey dates back more than 170 years, a rich history that strengthens our enduring commitment to encouraging investment in innovation and creativity within the UK.
Our mission is to help people grow the UK economy by providing an IP system that encourages investment in creativity and innovation.
We examine, grant and register IP rights and maintain the IP registers for the UK. We help resolve legal disputes over IP rights through the IPO tribunal and mediation services.
We formulate advice and implement IP policy and shape the national framework for governing IP rights. We promote the UK’s interests overseas through the development of the international IP rights system.
We also raise business and consumer awareness of the risks surrounding IP crime and infringement and work closely with law enforcement and other agencies to protect IP rights.
In 2024, we published our strategy: IP for a creative and innovative UK Strategy 2024 to 2027. This sets out what we aim to achieve by the end of the 2026/27 financial year. It reaffirms our long-term mission and aligns with the government’s Plan for Change and mission for economic growth.
Our contributions to growing the UK economy and encouraging investment in creativity and innovation are built around the three pillars of our strategy, these are:
- our services: High-quality, efficient and accessible
- our policy: Supporting innovation and the economy
- our organisation: High-performing, with skilled people connected by shared purpose
Our contribution to innovation and growth in 2024/25
In the following sections, we set out how we have contributed to the promotion of innovation and economic growth in the UK through the services and business support we provide, the data we make available and the policy we provide advice on.
IP services that drive innovation
Providing high-quality, timely and cost-effective IP services is fundamental to how we back science, creativity and innovation to help grow the economy. By protecting their ideas, creations and technological developments, businesses can convert them into commercial successes that accelerate innovation and drive the UK’s national and regional growth.
Against a backdrop of sustained demand for many of our services, we performed strongly against our stretching customer service standards in 2024/25. We also achieved an average customer satisfaction score of 89% (87% in 2023/24). This highlights our long-standing commitment to customer service and making the administrative steps of registering and managing IP as smooth and efficient as possible.
Resolving IP disputes as effectively and efficiently as possible helps innovative businesses to make best use of their rights. It gives certainty to all businesses involved in disputes, which can help them to go on to innovate and grow with confidence. In 2024/25, the IPO’s tribunal issued 712 decisions – the second highest volume ever. We also increased our capacity for mediation of IP disputes, helping businesses avoid litigation. 87% of appealed decisions were upheld in 2024/25, reflecting the quality of our decisions.
We are undertaking the most comprehensive modernisation of the UK’s IP services in our history. Our digital transformation programme will provide a single, integrated system to allow creators, innovators and businesses to interact with their IP (patents, trade marks and designs) in one place. This will make working with IP easier for everyone and help to accelerate innovation and support businesses to realise the full investment and growth benefits.
In 2024/25, we released our One IPO patents service pilot to test it with a select group of customers. The feedback from these customers has been vital in developing a quality service and customer experience, ahead of making it available to all patent customers in 2025/26. The features of the new service will save customers time, use built-in checks to prevent errors and create a more flexible way of working on draft applications.
Unlocking the value of our data to support economic growth
The data we hold is unique and valuable with more than 3 million granted rights held across our registers. We make this data publicly and freely available for researchers, inventors and creators. In doing so, we support the UK to maintain and grow its reputation for innovation and help society to benefit from knowledge and ideas.
In January 2025, we publicly launched our new patents online IP search tool, One IPO Search. By 31 March 2025, there had been nearly 11,000 searches by 8,000 users. The new tool makes it easier and faster to find, monitor and analyse patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) data.
As part of a modern digital government, this new tool helps businesses to seamlessly access the information they need to make smarter decisions and exploit the opportunities for innovation and growth.
Business support in the UK’s innovation eco-system
We want creators, innovators and entrepreneurs to maximise the benefits of IP - from attracting investment to realising the full growth potential of their ideas and creations. IP needs to be understood and managed well to realise this.
We provide a comprehensive range of free digital guides and tools, which reached over 45,000 customers in 2024/25. This year, we extended our established and award winning “Speaking our Customers’ Language” approach to our broader customer communications and guidance. By making information more accessible, we will build a stronger understanding of IP.
We launched our new financial support scheme, IP Advance, supporting high-growth potential, innovative small medium enterprises (SMEs) to identify, manage and commercialise their IP. We worked with partner organisations to deliver the scheme and provided funding to almost 400 businesses.
We formed a new IP Finance Advisory Group to enhance our engagement with the financial sector and IP professionals. By working across government and industry, we are exploring ways to help SMEs leverage their IP assets to secure growth finance, including reducing barriers to IP-backed lending. This will help inform our future policy work and build the evidence base.
We launched a new online Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) Resource Hub to make it easier for businesses, especially SMEs, to understand and navigate this often-complex ecosystem.
A patent that protects technology which is essential to implementing a standard is known as a Standard Essential Patent (SEP). Standards can encourage innovation, enable jobs and growth, and support the interoperability, safety and quality of products. The new resource hub was accessed over 900 times between July 2024 and March 2025 and received positive feedback from businesses. In 2025/26, we will continue to consider ways to further encourage innovation and growth including the case for regulation.
An IP system that encourages innovation and creativity
Through our policy advice we encourage innovation and creativity to support the government’s missions. Whether through boosting trade; ensuring a stable and well-understood regulatory environment that provides confidence for business; or facilitating collaboration and investment in IP-rich sectors, we work to support UK economic growth.
We sought views on how the government can ensure the UK’s legal framework for artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright supports our creative industries and AI sector. Both are essential to driving economic growth and delivering the government’s Plan for Change. The consultation received over 11,500 responses. As of 31 March 2025, these responses were being analysed. We are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and DSIT to develop practical measures and progress the government’s priorities.
We progressed with our wide-ranging review on how we can improve the designs framework to encourage innovation and give the UK a competitive edge. We want to understand what matters most when protecting designs and how the system should be improved. Responses to a survey that we released in February 2025 will inform our future consultation proposals later in 2025.
We also promote and protect the international IP framework and support UK businesses to trade internationally. We continue to work closely with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to contribute to free trade agreement negotiations. Our IP attaché network also supports UK businesses seeking to trade overseas and works with those governments to improve the IP environment.
In 2024/25, we secured a positive outcome for the UK through multilateral treaty negotiations convened by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The new design law treaty was agreed at the Riyadh Diplomatic Conference and will support UK businesses trading around the world with shared international standards for applying to protect their designs.
IP crime and infringement is a threat to UK economic growth and harms consumers and businesses. We have worked collaboratively with partners in government and industry to help protect innovation, disrupt IP crime and ensure intellectual property rights are respected and enforced.
We have expanded our regional IP crime coordinators into Scotland and Northern Ireland to provide full UK coverage. These coordinators are embedded in regional Trading Standards services across the UK. Our 2024/25 annual survey of Trading Standards Officers’ work on intellectual property (IP) crime highlights examples of the IP enforcement activity that we supported. Our coordinators provided specialist support on investigations and projects that help detect, disrupt and prosecute those responsible for IP crime and related criminality.
A core strand of our Counter Infringement Strategy is raising awareness and understanding of IP crime and infringement and the risks surrounding it. Our ‘fake always breaks’ campaign highlighted the dangers of counterfeit car parts. Our ‘choose safe not fake’ campaign also exposed the risks of counterfeit hygiene and beauty products.
Both campaigns achieved significant media and consumer engagement with our evaluation showing that 79% of consumers said the campaigns had deterred them from purchasing counterfeit goods. Campaigns such as these are an important part of our approach to making IP crime and infringement unacceptable. In doing so, we aim to disrupt the demand for counterfeits and give legitimate businesses more opportunities for growth.