What a year: 216,000 trade mark examinations

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has released its Innovation and Growth Report for 2021-2022 and it contains some significant figures and statistics.

In the data for its 2021-2022 year, the UKIPO examined a record 216,000 trade mark applications. These were comprised of both national UK applications and those filed via the Madrid Protocol – this is a staggering increase of 59% from its 2020-2021 report (where 187,000 trade mark applications were examined). Despite this huge increase, the UKIPO also managed to reduce its average time frame to issue examination reports from three months to between five and fifteen days.

Although its not just trade marks that the UKIPO handles, it dealt with 71,000 design right applications (which was an increase of 71.8% over the previous year) and again reduced its examination times to its normal standard of between five and fifteen days.

These reduced trade mark and design examination times have great benefit for all involved in the IP world, this is as a delayed examination report will ultimately result in the delayed registration of valuable IP rights.

You don’t need to take my word on IP rights being valuable either, the UKIPO provides data which explains the investment in intangible assets grew by 3.6% to £168.7 billion; between 2018 and 2019 and £134.3 billion was invested in the UK in knowledge assets. The UKIPO’s report makes it clear that the evidence suggests that UK entities that innovate grow at approximately twice the rate of those entities that do not. The UK is ranked fourth in the world in the World Intellectual Property Office’s Innovation Index for 2021.

The work of the UKIPO isn’t over yet either, the report gives significant detail of its future plans. A majority of which will come as a great benefit for innovators and rights holders: it published its Counter-Infringement Stretegy in February of this year, transformed its intelligence resource, recruited specialist liaison posts within trading standards regional teams and over 400 on-line traders were reported to Instagram for removal and take-down (via Operation Monty).

The report is available here (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-innovation-and-growth-the-ipo-at-work-2021-22) and why not give it a read and then arrange a free IP consultation with one of Brffa’s expert lawyers to discuss how IP can assist you and your business.

Written by Sam O’Toole – Associate