A new digital intellectual property service could slash the time it takes to renew IP rights from five days to just five minutes, it has been revealed.
The report comes after the launch of the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) digital renewals service.
According to the regulator, intellectual property rights customers can use the tool to renew “up to 1,500” IP rights – such as patents, trade marks and designs – in a “single digital transaction”.
It is the first time the service has been available to all customers following a successful trial period, which took place between April and December last year.
With a 96 per cent satisfaction score, the IPO says the service has already handled “around £138 million worth of transactions” and helped renew around 550,000 individual intellectual property rights.
The fully digital service has also helped reduce errors and cut the time it takes to process renewals by around five days – meaning most bulk renewals can be completed in as little as five minutes.
Customers who use the new service will also benefit from “automated electronic delivery of correspondence and receipts, certificates”, and can complete transactions “at the time and place that suits them”, the IPO added.
Commenting on the digital renewals service, Peter Slater, Deputy Director of IPO’s Technical Change team, said: “Our new renewals service has proved that we are more than capable of delivering on our promises of radically improved digital services and we’ll continue this journey with the needs of our customers at the core.
“The journey toward introducing a new service isn’t always going to be seamless, particularly at the very earliest stages. Therefore, the value of testing new services with a range of customers with different needs could not be clearer. This approach has helped us design a system that met the needs of all our customers, whether they file one renewal or 1,000.”
The new service forms part of the regulator’s digital transformation plans and ‘One IPO service’, which will provide a single, integrated renewal service across all registered IP rights.
To access the new digital renewals service, please click here.
For help and advice with related matters, please get in touch with our expert intellectual property team today.