The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) is the official government body with responsibility for intellectual property (IP) rights. Its remit is wide as it is responsible for granting trade marks, designs and patents, adjudicating certain types of IP disputes and it also educates businesses and consumers about IP rights.
The 2023 “Facts and figures: patents, trade marks, designs and hearings: 2023” UKIPO report was recently released and it’s clear that 2023 was a good year for the UKIPO.
2023 saw a record breaking 81,215 design applications along with 19,943 patent applications and 163,726, compared with the 2023 statistics these amount to increases of 20.6%, 2.4% and 3.1% respectively.
Unfortunately, not all applications achieved grant as of those numbers 77,254 designs and 143,513 trade marks were granted. Between 2022 and 2023 patent grants decreased by 20.8%.
Chinese and US applicants have also been busy, of non-UK applications applicants from China filed the highest number of trade mark and designs and US applicants filed the highest number of patents. The figures are quite remarkable as trade mark applications filed by Chinese and US applicants amounted to 52.3% of all non-UK-based applications and close to 25% of all applications filed with the UKIPO for 2023. Novartis AG filed the most UK trade mark applications with 141 applications made to the UKIPO.
A registered trade mark works by protecting a brand/mark in relation to categories of goods or services, these are “classes”. For 2023, the total number of filed classes was 351,638. As part of the registration process, third parties are given the opportunity to oppose the registration and there was a total of 6,801 oppositions filed. Of those oppositions, 291 were unsuccessful, 406 were successful or partially successful and the remainder were pending at the end of the year.
We suspect that with a good registration strategy more of the trade mark, design and patent applications would have been successful and achieved a registration. If you have questions on how best to register your IP rights please do not hesitate to contact us at info@briffa.com or on 0207 096 2779.
