IPO’s strategy sets out our ambition to deliver excellent IP services, make IPO a brilliant place to work and be the best IP office. To achieve that, we know that we have to completely change how we operate, using modern and customer-focussed systems and ways of working.
Over the next 5 years we will make those changes through our ambitious One IPO transformation programme. This document outlines our One IP transformation plans, and explains why we are changing, what to expect and our next steps.
Ministerial Foreword
Intellectual Property (IP) is the lifeblood of innovation. It encourages and rewards businesses, inventors and creators to share their talents with the world, protecting their ideas. It is the essential fuel that will help the UK economy build back better following the pandemic. The UK already has a world leading IP environment, but a service for innovators must itself innovate, iterate and continuously improve.
I am delighted to endorse the IPO’s plan to transform the UK IP environment over the next few years. Our collective vision is to provide the world’s best IP environment, through modern, integrated digital services that remove needless barriers to innovation and make IP both more accessible and powerful. By providing businesses and citizens with the tools they need to harness the power of IP we can make the UK a more attractive place to invest, enabling and accelerating UK innovation.
CEO Foreword
At IPO our ambition is to be the best IP office in the world. We know that our customers value our first-class culture and customer service, which already sets us apart. However, we also know that our services are not digital enough, and our customers rightly expect more as the world we live in becomes increasingly digital by default.
Our transformation programme is our pledge to up our game – to deliver the quality digital services that meet the needs of our customers. To achieve that we will not replicate what we do now, but completely transform the way we deliver services. This will not only result in more modern, flexible, digital services, but also opportunities to explore new services to help our customers protect, research and use their IP more effectively.
We know that helping our customers helps the UK economy, and we are passionate about playing our part to help both build back better.
One IPO Transformation vision
Our One IPO Transformation will not just modernise and recreate our current processes, systems and services. We will completely transform what we do, the way we do it and the value we add as an organisation to the UK economy. We will be more effective, not just more efficient.
In the coming years, our key objectives will be to empower our people, deliver customer-focussed services and unleash the power of our data. This will allow us to unlock our potential, offer new services, enable and accelerate UK innovation and be global IP leaders.
One IPO Transformation objectives
Delivering the best tools to enable our people to excel
We will provide our people with the best tools, systems, opportunities and support, so that everyone can excel in a modern working environment.
Providing outstanding, customer-focussed services
We will provide fast, flexible, high quality services which give our customers a seamless experience across different IP rights. Our services will be far more efficient and less bureaucratic, saving time and money for our customers and ourselves.
Unleashing the power of our data to help drive economic growth
Our data will give us a better understanding of our customers, so we can provide services which better meet their current requirements and anticipate their future needs. Our partners and customers will use our data to identify and exploit opportunities for innovation and to grow their businesses.
Enabling and accelerating UK innovation
We will attract new innovators and businesses to the UK by promoting and increasing the advantages of the UK IP environment for innovation. With faster, flexible services and accessible data, our customers will be able to more quickly identify new opportunities and grow their business.
Being global IP leaders
We will be an outward facing, collaborative organisation and a leading voice and influence in the world IP environment. The IPO will make it easier for our UK customers to protect and benefit from their IP internationally so they can really grow their businesses. We will help new global customers and partners to understand the benefits and advantages of investing and innovating in the UK.
Why are we transforming?
We know that there are a lot of things we do well, and in particular our customers value our customer service and the professionalism of our staff. However, our customers have been telling us for a long time that they want better digital services, and that tasks that should be simple can be very complicated.
We are currently working on ageing technology and to outdated processes, which are built around administration, not customer needs. Our transformation programme aims to address this to make us the best IP Office in the world. We want move from being an organisation mainly focussed on granting IP rights, to an organisation mainly focussed on growing businesses and the UK economy.
What can I expect from IPO’s transformation?
Our future services will be:
- fast – quick and easy to use
- customer-focused – built around customer needs
- seamless – all of our services under one system
- high quality – comparable to the best digital services you use day-to-day
- flexible – can be quickly changed and adapted to keep pace with new technologies
But what does that mean for you? Here are examples of what our customers have told us they want, and how our new services are being developed to meet those needs.
Image to go here of examples what our customers have told us they want, and how our new services are being developed to meet those needs.
Benefit 1: A single, integrated system for all IP rights
You will be able to access all IPO’s services through one system, and seamlessly manage all of your IP rights in one place. You will no longer have to fill out multiple forms to change your account information.
Benefit 2: Customers will have a single online IPO account with convenient self-service features
Many tasks which are currently cumbersome and time-consuming will become much easier, including viewing the status of your applications and updating your personal /or business details.
Quote:
It would be beneficial to be able to access rights information and make personal information changes online. I would like to be able to manage notification preferences via user account.
(IP Attorney)
Benefit 3: Our existing online services will be redesigned to make them fully digital and quicker and easier to use.
Our services will be completely paper-free and provide the features and convenience that you would expect from a modern digital service. We will continue to conduct rigorous quality checks to ensure that registered IP rights remain of a high quality.
Quote:
The world is becoming more fast-paced, it’s becoming quicker, it’s simpler to do things. I can do banking on my phone – it would be great if I could do UK IPO on my phone. That for me would be the way to make things simpler, more automated, less bureaucratic.
(Dawn Goff – In-house IP Professional)
Benefit 4: Collaboration and real-time advice
We will build on our strong reputation for excellent customer service, by providing online chat, guidance and support features to support and collaborate with customers when and where they need it.
Quote:
It should be as easy as doing online banking and there should be a help or chat bubble on the side that you can get an immediate response from. Having support from a network of users, or easy real-time support during an application would help get your questions answered very quickly.
(Mandy Haberman – Private Applicant)
Benefit 5: Customers will be able to easily research IP, with powerful analytics tools that will help them search, query, interpret and share our data
Our data will be opened up so researchers, businesses and inventors can learn from and build upon the UK’s brightest ideas.
Benefit 6: Completing our transformation will make IPO a more effective and efficient organisation.
This means we will be able to deploy resources to new services that provide further benefits to our customers. We can spend more time helping our customers use and monetise their IP, not just helping them protect their ideas.
Quote:
At the end of the day, protection is nice to have, but the important thing is what you actually do with that IP, not just the fact of owning IP. I think IPO has a role in helping businesses understand how to use their IP
(Martin Layton – Business Advisor)
When will this happen and how long will it take?
Our transformation programme will be a marathon, not a sprint. We expect it to take around five years to complete. However, that does not mean you will have to wait five years to see any changes. By the end of 2023 we will launch our new patents service, followed by trade marks and designs in 2025. We are moving patents service onto the new system first, because it is in greater need of an update than trade marks or designs. We are also looking at quick wins that we can deliver throughout the programme.
We are delivering the programme in three phases to break it down into manageable chunks and give our customers an idea of what they can expect and when. The three phases are:
Phase one – Build the One IPO foundation (2021 – 2023)
We will start to build a single, integrated system for all IP rights (patents, trade marks and designs) – our Common IP System (CIPS). By the end of this phase, our patents service will have moved onto this system.
Phase two – All rights on One IPO (2023 – 2025)
Trade marks and designs will join Patents on our new Common IP system. We will offer our customers a fully digital service, where they can manage all of their different IP rights and account details in one place.
Phase three – Be the best IP office (2025 onwards)
We will listen to customers and staff to deliver ongoing improvements and excellent IP services, make IPO a brilliant place to work and create a world leading IP environment. We will be the best IP office in the world.
Transformation roadmap
Our transformation roadmap (figure 1) shows what new services will be available at the end of each phase of the programme.
How we are transforming
IPO has always had completely separate systems, processes and services for different IP rights – patents, trade marks and designs. In a paper world, this made sense, and helped ensure smooth and error-free administration. We now live in a digital world, where we have powerful tools to automate administration. Now we can design processes and services around what our customers need. To that end, everything we do in our transformation programme will have customer needs front and centre.
To work out how we would transform our services, we went back to the drawing board. We thought about what our services would look like if we redesigned them around customer needs from the ground up. Drawing upon a vast amount of customer research we came up with our future ‘Service Design’. Instead of building our services around separate IP rights (patents, trade marks and designs), the new Service Design is focussed around the key tasks our customers need to perform – to protect, research and use IP.
Andy Bartlett / Greg Clarke quote
In future our services will be structured around these key tasks:
- protect IP – services that allow customers to secure and manage their IP rights. It also includes services that allow customers to challenge registered IP rights or IPO decisions
- research IP – services that allow customers to search and analyse the wealth of IP data IPO holds. Customers will also be able to access IPO publications by industry, market or topic
- use IP – services that support customers in making the best use of their IP. These could include services to help customers understand or monetise their IP rights
Image to go here off what is the one IPO Service Design
What are the new or transformed services?
Having identified the core tasks our customers need to complete, we developed a list of the services we could provide to help customers complete those tasks. The diagram below shows the new services that will be delivered as part of our One IP transformation.
Protect IP
Our protect IP services will be:
- manage IP – Customers will be able to access a single IPO account where they can view and manage all of their information relating to their IP in one place. It’s here that a customer will be able to change their name and address and update who owns the IP. Customer will also be able to record a mortgage or license and renew their IP using this service
- secure IP – Customers will be able to apply for and register a patent, trade mark or design using a fully digital service. We’ll be making our services joined up, so wherever possible, our customers will go on the same journey whether they’re applying for a patent, trade mark or design
- challenge IP – Customers will be able to challenge IPO decisions or registered rights more easily, for example through our tribunals process. We will make it easier for people to challenge or enforce IP, whether they’re the owner or a third party. We’ll offer a consistent view offering the same tools and functionality to all.
- guidance and training – Customers can understand how best to navigate our services and how their IP can contribute to business growth
- security patents – Offline government security related patents
Research IP
Our Research IP services will be:
- search IP – Customers will be able to run search queries on a single public register
- analyse IP – Customers will be able to analyse IP, export reports and share their results with others
- IP Insights – Customers will be able to access publications by industry, market or topic
Use IP
Use IP is all about how we can move beyond just helping people protect their ideas, into helping and supporting them to use and monetise their IP. In the first instance, our transformation programme is focusing on getting the fundamentals right, to make sure we can deliver an outstanding customer experience for our core services. Our customer feedback clearly shows that getting our core services right is the priority, so we are focussing on Protect IP and Research IP first for that reason.
While we don’t have any immediate plans to provide any ‘Use IP’ services, it is our longer term goal. Making our core services more digital and efficient will allow us to invest in offering new services in the future, focussed on empowering people to use and monetise their IP. This is will allow us to give even greater value to our customers, play a stronger role in enabling and accelerating UK innovation and drive economic growth. As quote?
How will the programme be run?
In phase one: Build the One IPO Foundation, the programme will split into a series of smaller projects – one for each of the new or transformed services (Manage IP, Challenge IP etc). Each of these projects will be run using the agile project management principles.
“We’re delivering our One IPO Transformation following the Agile project framework, but what does that mean? Agile is all about putting our users, that’s you, our customers at the heart of what we do. We’ll prioritise these needs over everything else.
By focusing on the needs of those who’ll be using our systems and those who’ll be accessing our services, we’ll make sure we build something that our users actually want – outstanding, customer-focussed services and tools which will enable you to excel.
This will make sure that we’re not trying to solve problems that aren’t important to our users.”
**Andy Bartlett, SRO of Transformation **
Don’t just take our word for it. In the video below Roo Reyonolds, Product Manager at the Government Digital Service, explain what agile is and why he uses it.
In practice, agile means that each project will go through various key phases designed to develop and test each service and product to make sure it continuously meets the needs of our customers. During each phase we will show our work to our customers, listen to their feedback and make changes. The Government Digital Service’s Service Manual provides further information about the stages of agile projects, but in summary, the key stages are:
Discovery
This is where we begin our research. We’ll look to learn even more about our users – this goes beyond understanding what they want. We’ll look at what they’re trying to achieve when using our services and how they go about it. It’s here where we’ll investigate if there’s likely to be anything which will hold us back or slow us down.
What we learn in Discovery will help us to work out what solution we want to move forward with.
Alpha
When we get to Alpha, we’ll begin to try out and test the different solutions we found out about during Discovery. We’ll build prototypes and test these different ideas.
By the end of Alpha, we’ll be in a position to decide which of these ideas are worth us taking forward into Beta.
Beta
The Beta phase is where we take the best solution from our alpha phase and start to build it for real. This is what should eventually become the service that customers will use. It’s here that we prepare for the transition to live by undertaking Private and Public Beta phases
Private Beta
Once we’ve built the solution, start Private Beta, where we’ll invite a limited number of customers to use our service and tell us what they think and what we need to improve.
Public Beta
We’re ready to move into Public Beta once we’re sure we can run the service to scale. We’ll open up the service to anyone who needs it but we’ll still be hanging on to our legacy service until we’re ready to fully go live.
What will happen in phase one of the programme?
By the end of phase one we will have completed development of our Common IP System – the IT system that all of our services will be built on – and have moved the new patents service onto it. To achieve that, we will first develop the new services outlined in the Service Design (Manage IP, Secure IP etc), each of which is part of the foundation of what will be our new patent, trade marks and designs services. Once that work has been completed, we will start to develop our new patents service on that new foundation.
Phase one of the programme will start in March 2021, and by the end of the year we hope to have completed the initial ‘Discovery’ phase for all of our ‘Protect IP’ projects – Manage IP, Secure IP and Challenge IP. This means that by 2022 we should be starting to build early prototypes for each of those services and starting our Research IP projects – Search IP, Analyse IP and IP Insights. Figure X gives a rough timeline of our planned work in Phase One of the programme.
What we have done already?
Over the last year we have started laying the groundwork for our transformation and taking actions to be more customer-focused.
We have:
- introduced our new unified digital renewals service, which allows customers to renew design rights online for the first time; bulk renewal of up to 1,500 IP rights in a single transaction; and slashed bulk renewal processing times from 5 days to 5 minutes
- rolled out our AI powered trade mark pre-apply service to improve novice customers’ chances of successfully registering a high-quality trade mark
- started sending patent correspondence by email for the first time as a result of Covid-19, and in response to customer feedback we’ve now made this change permanent
- started including the payment details in all of our paper-based fee bearing forms, rather than having it as a separate fee sheet. This reduced an administrative burden for customers and reduced incorrect payments
- developed our future Service Design, which outlines the range of transformed services we could offer in the future
- started to put the IT building blocks in place for the new systems we will be building as part of our transformation
- conducted a legislation review to identify legislative changes that we might need to make for our future digital services
- established a customer panel to give us feedback on our transformation plans
Image on introduced our new unified digital renewals service
How can you get involved?
In the coming weeks, we will start recruiting customers to help test and give feedback on our initial thinking. We would love to hear from you and learn from your experience
“We’ll be exploring more about our customers to understand what they’re trying to achieve when they use our services and how they go about using our services.
We want to understand the customer journey and understand what it looks like overall and across all of our services – we’ll map all of our services and identify the pain points. We want to validate the plans we’ve put together and make sure they’re right for our customers.
By getting an accurate image of who our customers are, it means we’re more likely to be successful in building a system or service that meets the needs of our users.”
Gill Richardson
Head of User Research [image of Gill]
If you would like to take part in our user testing please contact x to register your interest.
Still have questions?
On x May 2021 we will be holding a Q&A session on our transformation, where the leaders of our transformation programme will take you through our plans and give you the opportunity to ask any questions you may have. If you would like to take part, you can register your interest here. If you have any questions about our transformation in the meantime you can contact X.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/one-ipo-transformation
Content Reproduced verbatim from the Website of the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) as permitted under their Terms of Use.