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Transparency data: IPO customer service standards

Intellectual Property Office

July 23
14:19 2024

We have reviewed our service standards for 2024-25 to ensure that they continue to meet customer needs and are reported in a more standardised way.

We know how important our quality of service is to our customers. So over the last year we have been developing a measure to assess the quality of our work. We will assess quality across the examination process in Trade Marks and Designs and searches, examinations and amendments in Patents. We are now in a position to be able to publish our quality performance and will do so on a quarterly basis from July 2024.

We are currently meeting, or exceeding, many of our customer service standards. However, unprecedented demand continues to impact timescales in some areas. We are working hard to address any delays by recruiting and training additional staff and improving the efficiency of our processes.

More detail about our activities can be found in our Corporate Priorities.

Service Standard May 2024
performance
June 2024
performance
Customer Support Centre
We will answer telephone calls to the Customer Support Centre within 60 seconds. We will respond to all written enquiries within 5 working days (measurement excludes enquiries transferred to specialist teams for a direct response).
Calls
99% in 60 secs

Emails
100% in 5 days
Calls
99% in 60 secs

Emails
100% in 5 days
Trade Mark and Designs Examination
We will issue the first report on trade mark and designs domestic and international cases within 10 working days from the date it is ready to be examined. An application is ready to be examined once it has been filed with us and we have issued a filing receipt.
Trade Marks:
90% completed in 9 working days

International Trade Marks:
90% completed in 9 working days

Designs:
90% completed in 7 working days


International designs:
90% completed in 9 working days
Trade Marks:
90% completed in 9 working days

International Trade Marks:
90% completed in 10 working days

Designs:
90% completed in 9 working days

International designs:
90% completed in 12 working days
Patents Preliminary Examination
Assessment of procedural and non-technical aspects of a patent application. We will complete all preliminary examinations 20 working days of the applications filing date.
90% completed in 14 working days 90% completed in 16 working days
Patent Search
We will issue all search reports within 6 months from request.
90% completed in 6 months and 3 days 90% completed in 6 months and 5 days
Patent Examination
Full substantive examination of legal and technical aspects of a patent application.
We will perform patent examinations within 42 months of the priority date.
90% completed in 48 months and 16 days 90% completed in 52 months and 2 days
Patent Acceleration
We will deal with all requests for accelerated processing within 2 months of receipt.
90% within 2 months 90% within 2 months
Trade mark and Designs Ex-parte hearing decisions
We will issue a hearings report within 10 working days of a trade mark or design ex parte hearing.

Example of differences between ex parte and inter partes hearings.
90% of hearing reports issued in 10 working days 90% of hearing reports issued in 10 working days
Inter-Partes Hearing Decisions
We will issue formal decisions in trade mark, design and patent cases within 3 months of the hearing. If no hearing takes place the decision will be issued within 3 months of all submissions being filed or the deadline date.
See wording below table
90% of decisions issued in 8 months and 27 days 90% of decisions issued in 8 months and 16 days
Register Requests
We will action requests to correct names and addresses and record registrable transactions (such as a change of owner) 10 working days of receipt.
Patents:
3 working days

Trade Marks and Designs:
90% completed in 5 working days
Patents:
6 working days

Trade Marks and Designs:
90% completed in 5 working days

Quality performance

Patent searches, examinations and amendments 98%
Trade mark examinations 95%
Design examinations 100%

The IPO Tribunals are currently managing a significant backlog of cases.This followed unprecedented levels of demand which arose for specific reasons throughout 2022 and 2023.We acknowledge the resulting delays and thank users for their patience.We are working hard to eliminate the backlog and return to performance in line with the customer service standard over the next 18-24 months.

Updates to this page

Published 9 July 2014
Last updated 23 July 2024 +show all updates
  1. Quality performance added.

  2. Customer service data for June 2024 added.

  3. Performance data for May 2024 added.

  4. Customer Service Performance for April 2024 added.

  5. March 2024 performance review added.

  6. February 2024 performance review added.

  7. January 2024 performance review added.

  8. December 2023 performance review added.

  9. November 2023 performance review added.<

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