The Patent Office Re-branded

The U.K.'s Patent Office has now announced that it is to change its name to the UK Intellectual Property Office.

This re-branding of The Patent Office follows a recommendation made in the government-commissioned Gowers Report on intellectual property published at the end of last year and will be implemented on 2 April 2007.

In the Gowers Report, it was suggested that, because The Patent Office is responsible for trade marks and registered designs as well as for patents, its name is confusing. The Patent Office is not the first to make this kind of change. For example, the Australian patent office has been known as "IP Australia" for some years. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the new name abbreviates to "UKIP Office".

In the Gowers Report, the patent and trade mark regimes were generally found to be "fit for purpose". More extensive recommendations were made in respect of copyright in the light of new technologies which are available now which were not available when the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 was written.

Howard Wright
March 2007
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