Patents service updates and improvements
Information on the improvements we’re making to the patents service, including upcoming improvements and the latest updates.
What we’re working on
We’ve published a roadmap of the improvements we’re working on over the next 12 months.
What we’ve already done
Release notes: 29 October 2026
Apply for a patent
We’ve made the following improvements to the Apply for a patent service:
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you will now be able to get an immediate receipt of the information you submit in your patent applications. This ‘submission receipt’ will include all of your application details, including any documents you submitted. The submission receipt can be accessed from the green ‘confirmation’ screen you see when you submit your application. It applies to GB and national phase (NP1) and divisional patent applications. We will be making a further improvement which will allow you to access the submission receipt from the ‘pending applications’ page in your account. You can find out more about this in our LinkedIn article
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account administrators will now be able to delete draft applications in their account. Previously, only the user who created a draft could delete it
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you will now see the correct translation fees applied in national phase (NP1) patent applications
Manage intellectual property
We’ve made the following improvements to the Manage intellectual property service:
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you will see further improvements to the account set-up process. You will now find it easier to link the patents you own or manage to your account. Previously, the process relied on phone calls to the IPO and manual support. Now you can complete the process through self-service online
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a series of improvements have been made to support the reliability, performance, stability and resilience of the service
Search for intellectual property
We’ve made the following improvements to the Search for intellectual property service:
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you will now be able to search using a patent number without including the GB or EP prefix or the check number. For example, GB1234567.8 can now be searched by simply entering 1234567
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when you use the keyword search it will now search for words that are similar in meaning to your search term using machine learning. Previously, it only searched for matching words. You will still be able to select ‘Match exact words only’ if you want to search for the exact words you enter
These changes apply when you use the keyword search box, even when you’re also using other search criteria. Searches using only fields such as applicant, owner or filing date are not affected by this update (added 3 November 2026) -
you will see an improved and more consistent layout for patent and supplementary protection certificate (SPC) details. Long publication numbers will also wrap within tables, making them easier to read
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updates have been made to the software supporting the service, such as security patches and improvements to how we process searches
Release notes: 8 October 2026
Service-wide improvements
You can now set-up a passkey that you can use to access your account, which means you shouldn’t be logged out of your account as frequently.
A passkey is a digital credential stored on a device. You can use it to login to your account in the same way you login to your device. This could be a fingerprint, face ID or PIN. It doesn’t require a password or two-factor authentication, meaning you can login to your account up to 8 times faster than before.
To find out more about passkeys, setting them up and if they are right for you, take a look at this guidance from the Government Digital Service.
Apply for a patent
When uploading a description of your patent you can now manually enter the number of pages in the document. This will ensure that you are charged the correct fees for excess pages in your description.
Archive
When this page is updated old content will be removed so it remains current. You can find details of past release notes by viewing the archive timeline of this page, which can be searched by calendar date. You can also view ‘Show all updates’ at the bottom of this page to see when the page was updated.