188体育

It鈥檚 2022 and we鈥檙e now a little over two years away from launching our new patents service, with trade marks following in 2025 and designs in 2026. The first step of our transformation is to build the core services that will be used across patents, trade marks and designs. Over the last few months we鈥檝e been working on the first two of these, Manage IP and Secure IP.

Manage IP

Manage IP will allow you to view and manage all of your IP through a customer account. We鈥檝e been building and testing early designs of some of the most challenging parts of the service. So far we鈥檝e made early designs for:

• the 鈥榙ashboard鈥� of services that you can access from your account
  
• the initial registration process and linking IP rights to your account
  
• the 鈥榗hange of owner鈥� process, where you can transfer ownership of IP rights to other accounts

To find out more about the customer accounts, and see video demos of what we鈥檝e been working on, take a look at the from Chris Mitchell - Project Lead.

Secure IP

Secure IP is where you can do everything involved in securing your IP rights, from application through to grant or registration. We completed our initial research in December and will start building early designs of the service in the coming weeks. We expect our Secure IP service to give you the following benefits:

1. The same experience across all rights - want to align the application process across patents, trade marks and designs as much as possible

2. Providing the services you need - some customers have to shoehorn our services to meet their needs. In future, we want to offer a wider range of services which offer more flexibility. If you only want to, for example, apply for a filing date, there should be a service specifically designed for that.

3. More effective services - we want to help customers submit better quality applications to reduce errors and increase efficiency. We could do this through:

• validation rules - checks built into forms to reduce errors
  
• consistent high quality formats for supporting documentation
  
• re-use business data from elsewhere (eg Companies House)
  
• ensure image files are searchable
  
• artificial intelligence to help customers with applications

4. Guidance and communication - our customers don鈥檛 always apply for the correct IP rights, because our guidance isn鈥檛 clear enough. To address this we will explore:

• reviewing guidance to ensure it鈥檚 clear and easy to find
  
• building guidance into the application process
  
• look at alternative guidance methods - videos, live chat etc
  
• real-time notifications and status updates

5. Access IPO services your way - look to develop a tool that allows attorneys to access IPO services through the IP software they already use.

What鈥檚 next?

Over the next few months we鈥檒l:

• Manage IP - we鈥檒l build and early design for how you will share access to your IP rights with others and how you will change your account details
  
• Secure IP - we鈥檒l start building our early designs of the service, covering the key points described above
  
• Research IP - we鈥檒l begin investigating the tools you need to search, research and analyse UK IP

How you can help

It鈥檚 vitally important that you shape these services, not us. We urgently need you to take part in our user research to give us feedback on what we鈥檙e building and shape its direction. We only need 90 mins of your time. You can sign up to take part by emailing [email protected].

Alternatively, if you just want to be kept up to date, sign up for our transformation updates by emailing [email protected].