New Oxford IP Professor; IPO fees reduction on the cards?

New Oxford IP professor

Oxford University has officially announced the appointment of Graeme Dinwoodie as Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Oxford University. He will take up his appointment in June.

The IPKat wishes Graeme the best of luck in his new position.

Full press release here.


Fees consultation

The Intellectual Property Office (which the IPKat wouldn't dare call the Patent Office, or even the UK-IPO) has launched a consultation on fees and services.

The aims are to ensure that the registration of national trade marks is a viable option, to ensure that businesses continue to protect their IP during the economic downturn and to encourage e-business.

Amongst the proposals are an early assistance scheme for trade mark applications, a 50% fee reduction for e- filing of trade marks and a lesser reduction for patents, the abolition of series registrations for trade marks, the scrapping of the fast track trade mark registration procedure (because the normal procedure is just as fast) and the reduction of trade mark tribunal fees.

Responses are due by 1 June.

The IPKat notes that most of the proposals are aimed at trade marks. This could be because of the need to compete with OHIM, but perhaps businesses are more willing to put less money into protecting their trade marks than their patents when the going gets tough.
New Oxford IP Professor; IPO fees reduction on the cards? New Oxford IP Professor; IPO fees reduction on the cards? Reviewed by Anonymous on Thursday, March 12, 2009 Rating: 5

8 comments:

  1. (I want to comment on the Oxford appointment of Graham Dinwoodie, but there's no provision for it, so I've had to append it to the next item about the IPO fees consultation!) My point, which is MOST important, is that at the commencement of my fifth decade it used to be policemen who started looking decidedly too young for the job. Now it seems to be academics as well. Most worrying...

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  2. response to 1st Anon: photoshop

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  3. I've got things older than him in my freezer

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  4. Judging from Prof Dinwoodie's biography, he's 40 at least given that he was studying law at Harvard in 1987. And I'd say overexposure, not photoshop.

    As for the reduction in fees - there's not much to talk about on the patent side since you can't offer any meaningful reductions on the £200 it costs at the moment.

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  5. My colleagues at the IPO have spotted an uncharacteristic error in coverage of the consultation on fee reductions. We're not proposing to reduce the fee for e-filing by 50% as is stated.

    We are proposing to reduce the basic application fee for e-filed applications by £30 (£170 instead of £200). This will only apply to people who pay in full at the time of filing.

    However , a 50% reduction in (all) fees is proposed for those who use the proposed "Early Assist" (via e-filing only) service package. The "Early Assist" package (do you reckon we should register that as a TM ?) has the advantage that the applicant hasn't made full payment at the start of the process and therefore loses the lot if the application is refused.

    Finally, the proposal regarding series is couched in the alternative, either abolish or introduce a fee relating to the number of marks in the series.

    Regards

    Edward Smith
    IPO

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  6. The IPO is right and why not have a look at your other blog here

    http://class46.eu/2009/03/uk-ipo-fee-changes-demystified.html

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  7. Before any lawyers jump down my throat, can I just add that, NO, you can't have BOTH an e-filing discount and an Early Assist split payment at the same time (see para 18 of the consultation paper).

    Goodness me, you'll be asking for 'two for one' next.

    Regards again

    Edward

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  8. The difference that the fee reductions will make on the patents side of things is nil.

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