| You said the new notification system was a barrier to those who wanted to register a trade
mark. |
We explained that the previous system was almost unworkable because so many Section 5 objections
were being raised. Under the new system it will be left to the owner of a trade mark to decide whether
later filed marks were in conflict with theirs. |
| You said you were extremely disappointed that a number of the links on our website did not
work. |
We apologised for any inconvenience that any problems with our website may have caused you.
We were investigating the problem with the broken links and taking measures to ensure that the problem
does not reoccur. |
| You said that you were unhappy with the way that we had dealt with an assignment issue. |
We apologized because in some areas the standard of service was not as good as it should
have been. The CEO said that if you were unhappy with the Hearing Officer’s decision on
this case, you should consider contacting your MP to pursue
your complaint via the
Parliamentary Ombudsman. |
| You said you were not treated courteously and fairly and that you were unhappy with the
examination report. |
We agreed that the examiner's reports could have been more thorough and this feedback was
passed onto the examiner. It was suggested that an informal interview might be a better way to progress
the case. You were told if you were still not satisfied with the way your complaint was being
dealt with, you could make a formal complaint. |
| You said that you were unhappy because your name and address were appearing on Google. |
We asked you to provide us with an alternative address so that we could amend the information
on our web site. You were also told we were introducing measures to stop this happening again in the
future. |
| You said that you were unhappy with matters relating to a hearing held on your trade mark. |
We wrote to you to clarify any misunderstandings and to apologise for any services that
we provided that fell below an acceptable level. |
| You said you were unhappy because you had sent in 2 payments and we had not acknowledged
these payments. |
We investigated this issue and explained that we had acknowledged the first payment. We
also apologized for the time taken to acknowledge your second payment. |
| You said that you were unhappy with the way that your patent was examined. |
We explained that the patent did not include a claim or abstract and this was requested
from you before the patent could be examined. We did not believe that the examiner was at fault and
had acted reasonably in these circumstances. |
| You said that you were unhappy that a prohibition order has been put on your patent. |
We explained that the prohibition order was made under Section 22 of the 1977 Patents Act.
You have given consent for the Ministry of Defense to review your application. If after their review
the prohibition order is withdrawn then your patent could continue. |
| You said that we had accepted a trade mark in error and that you had since opposed the mark. |
We explained we could not get involved as it might prejudice the opposition proceedings.
The validity of this trade mark would now be determined during the opposition proceedings. |
| You said you did not state on the application form that you wanted the mark in colour. You
were now concerned about what exactly your rights were and wondered whether you would have to re-file
in black and white. |
We informed you that in this case it was unlikely that colour would have any influence on
the trade marks distinctive character or the scope of protection and that it was probably unnecessary
to re-file the application in black and white. |
| You said that your combined Patent search and examination report was sent to the wrong address. |
An apology was sent to the agent for our delay in responding to his e-mail. The agent was
promised that he would be sent the appropriate documents. |
| You said that you were unhappy with the SAS Patent search done by the IPO, as the search
missed an earlier patent that was similar to yours. You wanted to know why we missed this earlier prior
art and wanted to know what could be done to avoid this happening again. |
We said that the examiner has reviewed their search and did not believe that their assessment
of patentability was incorrect .We reminded you of the limitations of these searches and offered to
discuss with you ways of trying to improve the service that you receive from us. |
| You said that you had filed an application and were told that you could not add unrelated
goods to your specification. |
We informed you that you could not add unrelated goods and that you would have to make a
fresh application. You were given details of our complaints procedure in case you wanted to make a formal
complaint about this issue. |
| You said it was simply unacceptable that our systems for filing an E-TM3 application did
not support certain browsers. |
You were told that this system was under review and we were presently in the process of
developing a replacement form. This form would enable customers to use a number of operating systems. |
