Intellectual Property Office
We are pleased to announce that on 18 February the IPOs Trade Marks and Designs Division achieved the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 Quality certification for its UK trade mark application process. This was from fee payment up to registration of the trade mark. This award includes the whole examination process and any opposition that might be filed after the application is published but before it is registered.
One of the IPOs strategic goals is to deliver high quality rights. In achieving this ISO 9001 quality certification for our trade mark processing, we are underpinning this IPO goal with a worldwide recognised quality framework and standard. We already have ISO 9001 accreditation in the Patents Division for granting of patents that have a high presumption of validity and provision of patent search services. This was achieved on 20 February 2003. Our aim is to achieve ISO certification for other services we provide including processing of international trade mark applications, resolution of trade mark invalidity and revocation cases and our designs application process.
Businesses are recognising the importance of protecting their brand through filing a trade mark application and the number of applications continue to grow year on year. Our time to first examination at the IPO is world class and we are currently examining trade mark applications at 10 days from filing.
This certification was achieved at the first attempt with the British Standards Institute who are our accreditors. See for further details.