Visit to the UKIPO
On the 17th of May, we (Oz, Jae and Henry - the newest trainees at Wynne-Jones) attended the highly popular annual visit to the UK IPO (Intellectual Property Office), in Newport, organised by the Informals. For those unfamiliar with the UK patents world, the IPO (aka “the other side” for IP attorneys) is basically where UK patent, design and trade mark applications are sent for examination/review and subsequently grant or refusal. Moreover, the Informals is an association of unqualified/trainee members of the profession which aims to provide a UK-wide support network for trainees, organises lectures/tutorials directed towards the exams and arranges events such as the one we attended.
The UK IPO visit agenda was roughly as follows:
- 10:00 Welcome and Coffee/Breakfast @10am
- 10:10 Seminars on IPO Services - covering subjects such as dispute resolution services and accelerated prosecution services available at the IPO
- 10:55 Meeting with Patent Examiners
- 12:00 Seminars on excluded matter and inventive step
- 12:45 Buffet lunch (feat. magnificent donuts!!!)
- 13:30 Claim drafting workshop
Meeting the Patent Examiners
We were given the opportunity to sit together with UKIPO examiners and experience their daily routines as well as chat about strategies they use to prepare Search Reports. Search Reports are reports that list documents that the Examiner considers to be relevant to the patent application under examination and hence gives an initial indication of the patentability of an invention, and although we were aware of the fact that this process can get very exhaustive, this experience allowed us to further appreciate how complicated this process can get and how the UKIPO manages this by using various kinds of software and searching methods.
Claim Drafting Workshop
During the claim drafting workshop, the group was divided into subgroups of 5 and each subgroup was accompanied by an examiner from the UKIPO. The aim of the workshop was to walk us through various stages of drafting a patentable and commercially advantageous claim.
