| You said you were unhappy with the search carried out on your patent. The patent examiner did not find an earlier UK patent. |
We explained in this case the search strategy used by the patent examiner was not wide enough and as a result they did not find the
UK patent. The
Chief Executive apologised because the service that the applicants received fell short of the standard that they had a right to expect. |
| You said you were unhappy with the way that an application for revocation was handled, rules 75(2) and (3) of the Patents Rules 1995 were not followed and that there was a delay in handling this case. |
We explained the procedures relating to rule 75(2) and (3) of the Patent Rules 1995. and accepted that we could have handled this case more effectively. The Chief Executive apologized and accepted that there was a delay in dealing with correspondence in this case.Patents Litigation Section has taken on board lessons
learnt in this
case. |
| You said you were unhappy at the way your Designs Dispute was handled and the hearing officer’s decision, which you wanted to appeal. |
We replied to all the concerns raised relating to the Designs Dispute and advice was given about any possible appeal.The Chief Executive concluded that in this case he did not believe that the Office had acted improperly and if the applicant was not satisfied with this outcome that they should contact their local MP and ask him to take up the office’s handling
of his complaint with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (the Ombudsman). The applicant was given the Ombudsman’s office contact details. |
| You said you were promised that the Private Applicant’s Manager would be looking into your case and would contact you in order to progress your patent application. After a few weeks you are still waiting to be contacted. |
We said that the Private Applicant’s Manager was reviewing this case very thoroughly and this involved consulting a number of his colleagues. The Chief Executive apologised for the delay in contacting you and said the manager was now ready to send a response and this would be sent immediately. |
| You said you were dissatisfied with the contents of the Hearing Officer’s written decision and with the publication of the decision on the UK-IPO website. |
We informed you that all documents relating to a published trade mark would be available for public inspection, unless a request was made to keep the documents confidential; no request was made in this case. You were told that if you wished to challenge the Hearing Officer’s decision, then the law allows for an appeal to either the High Court or the Appointed Person, as appropriate. The Chief Executive said he could not comment any further on a case that was still the subject of legal proceedings before the office. |
| You said you had great difficulty finding the on-line form TM3. |
We showed you where it was and explained how to complete the form. |
| You said that someone in the New Application Team implied that your series of marks would be acceptable and you were annoyed when a series objection was raised in your examination report. |
We discussed the series objection with you and the examiner explained that the file had been minuted by the New Applications member of staff stating that the decision as to whether the marks were a series would be made by the relevant examiner after the application was filed. The examiner agreed to pass your concerns on to our customer feedback department for their consideration. |
| You said the trade mark fee of £200 plus an additional fee of £50 per additional class was too high for small companies and felt the fees should be lower for small companies. |
We informed you that your feedback would be recorded and you were asked if you would like to be consulted when our next Fees Consultation took place. |
| You said you were very angry that our I.T. system for filing electronic trade mark applications did not support your web browsers. |
We stated our systems did not support all browsers, although it was hoped that this facility would be available during 2008, when our system would be able to support 9 more browsers. We advised you to use the Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser. |
| You said an application was filed and the payment made at the same time, however, you have just received a letter stating that your application has been abandoned. |
We apologized for the error and we are carefully reviewing our procedures and will be making improvements to try and ensure that this problem does not occur again. |
| You said some trade mark forms are still not available in word format on our website. You would also like us to highlight on the website when forms were last revised. |
We have made all of the trade marks forms apart from the TM7 available in word format on our website. We have also inserted a column next to each form which indicates when it was last revised. |
| You said were unhappy about the way we had handled a patent application faxed to the Office, which included faxing it back to the wrong number. |
We apologised for our mistake which was due to human error; We also refunded the £25 faxback fee. All staff on fax filing duties have been reminded to carefully check fax numbers when keying them in. |
| You said you could not find the consolidated patents act and rules, on our website. and found the website difficult to navigate. You suggested having a link on the front page to "Toolbox for applicants" or something similar, as on the European Patent Office (EPO) website. |
We informed you how to find the Patents Act and Rules. You were also told a new method of making Patents Act, Rules and the Manual of Patent Practice available to customers was currently being developed and should become available soon. The internet development team were currently reviewing the Office website and all website feedback was passed onto them. If the review indicated the need for a 'professional area' or 'Toolbox' type function then this would be considered during the review. |
| You said you were not happy with our on-line application process for a patent and also had a number of questions about the process. |
We gave you a detailed and comprehensive reply that fully answered all of your questions. |
| You said we had searched the wrong invention on your divisional application, even though you sent in a separate letter explaining which invention should be searched. |
We said the search was conducted in line with Patent Act and relevant practices, you agreed and applied for a new search. |
| You said you were unhappy with the new trade marks legislation to be introduced on 1 October 2007 and felt that it would be an extra burden for small businesses and that certain opposition fees should be reduced for small businesses. |
We outlined the reasons for the change and directed you to the information on our website. Your view on the opposition fees were valuable and would be passed to the Fees Review Team, although it was pointed out that charging different fees for the same statutory service was not legal unless the legislation specifically allows. |
| You said there had been a delay of several months in the publication of your trade mark and felt some examination staff were quite apathetic in dealing with your concerns. |
We apologized for the standard of service you had received from the office which was below our normally high standards. The application had been mislaid but was then found and published. The Chief Executive Officer said that we would learn from this and offer higher standards of customer service. |
| You said objections were raised against your trade mark and you wanted to amend your specification and your trade mark. |
We agreed that the specification could be limited but this would not be sufficient to overcome the objections regarding the existence of earlier confusingly similar marks. You were told that the 1994 Trade Marks Act does not allow for any amendments that would substantially affect the identity of the trade mark. |
| You said we had accepted a number of trade marks in error and you asked for these trade marks to be removed from the trade marks register. |
We informed you that the Registrar did not have the discretion or power to unilaterally remove marks from the register. If someone believed that a mark had been accepted in error then they should apply to have the mark declared invalid. You were informed that an application to make a mark invalid must be filed on the appropriate statutory form. |
| You said our old Trade Mark booklet still listed legal services in class 42 instead of class 45 |
We removed all the old stocks when new booklets were introduced earlier this year. |
| You said our website was difficult to use, the search function was not very good, past decisions were difficult to find and buried in an obscure place. |
We directed you to the various pages you wanted to view. |
| You said you wanted to do a full trademark search of our database and thought that you would have to travel to Wales to do the search, as there was no where in London where you could carry out a search of our databases. |
We informed you that you could do a search in London. And also told you a search could be done in the British Library and you were directed to where this information was on our website, and in the booklet “Trade Marks Essential Reading”. |
| You said you were unhappy because your latest request for an EOT had been refused. |
We explained you had already been given a number of EOTs and you were told that no further EOTs would be allowed unless you put forward substantial reasons for requesting additional time to progress their application |
| You said the IPO did not have a consistent approach when dealing with electronically filed forms and that you had received incorrect advice on the filing of electronic forms from IPO members of staff. |
We contacted you to explain the present IPO policy for dealing with electronic forms, including which e-forms were due to be introduced during the next 12 months and how the IPO intended to develop its e-services over the next few years |
| You said the automated message that you had listened to prior to speaking with the Central Enquiry Unit, was very quiet and you could not hear the message clearly. |
We listened to the automated message and it was clear, easily understood and at a reasonably audible level. |
| You said when you did a search on our database for a particular proprietor it only showed 1 Automated Data Processing (ADP) number instead of 2. |
We only update the information once a week on a Saturday night , so the proprietor information will be updated next Saturday night. |
| You said you were unhappy with the time that was taken to implement the Appointed Person Decision. |
We carried out a full investigation of this case. The Chief Executive confirmed there had been an unacceptable delay in implementing the Appointed Person’s decision. Changes have been made to procedures to ensure this can not happen again. The Chief Executive apologized for the delay and confirmed the agreed amendments had now been done. |
| You said we had registered a similar trade mark to your trade mark. |
We explained once a trade mark had successfully completed the examination, opposition and registration process the office could not take any action against the trade mark. However, if you felt we had registered this trade mark in error then you could take invalidity proceedings against it. |
| You said you were concerned because you had not heard anything about your trade mark for a while. |
We made a mistake when storing the application and apologized for the delay. A system has been introduced whereby all files are now checked by the clerical staff. Minimising the chances of this happening again. |
| You said you were given incorrect advice by the office and told to file a design rather than a patent. |
We have investigated the matter and have found 2 recorded telephone conversations with you, neither of which covers the issue of Patent protection. |
| You said you checked your mark using the "mark text" search on 18 September and were dismayed and annoyed to find the mark was showing as "expired" despite the fact that you had paid your renewal and this had been actioned on 17 September. |
We reassured you your mark was still registered and this was merely a result of the mark text search facility on our website only being updated once a week on a Saturday. The status was checked the following week you e-mailed to confirm that the status had been changed to registered. |
| You said you were unhappy with an e-mail you received from our Finance Section. You could not open the e-mail to read it and it opens in Notepad. |
We suggested the best way to view the filing receipt was to use the mouse to right click on the attachment and use the command "open with" and chose WORDPAD. This allowed you to view and save the receipt. |
| You said you had made a number of searches for his European patent on the European Patent Office (EPO) esp@cenet system; it only revealed renewal details and not the patent document itself. |
We informed you we made enquiries to the EPO, which revealed several reasons why a patent document might become temporarily unavailable for display. However, the EPO did not find any evidence from its records this document had actually been made unavailable. |
