| You said that you could not find consent information on our website. |
We informed you that this information had been removed from our website because under the
new system, notifications were not official objections and did not need to be overcome with a letter
of consent. TMD managers were considering whether or not to put consent information
back onto our website. |
| You said that you should have been told about unofficial registration companies. You had
sent a cheque for £500 to one of these companies because you thought they were connected to the IPO. |
We started sending out warning notices in December 2006 with our journal letters to inform
customers about these companies. Therewas also a warning notice on our website. The Customer Feedback
Officer contacted you and gave you information about these companies and confirmed that they were not
connected to the IPO. You decided to stop your cheque and this prevented your payment being made. |
| You said you wanted to discuss the examination report covering earlier rights and were unhappy
that the consent option was not detailed in the examination report. |
We told you consent was still an option. TMD managers were considering whether or not to
put consent information back onto our website. |
| You said you were annoyed because you received between 5-6 e-mails as part of the E-TM3
filing process and felt that this number should be reduced. |
We said that this issue was being considered by TMD senior managers and was likely to result
in the number of e-mails sent to customers being reduced to 2-3 e-mails. |
| You said that you had sent in a letter of consent, which had not been received in the office. |
We contacted you and asked if you would send us a copy of this consent letter. |
| You said you were unhappy about the new Trade Marks notification system because you thought
it was biased and it encouraged small businesses not to proceed with their applications. |
We told you that if you did not want to proceed with your application you could withdraw
it and avoid any possible opposition costs. You felt that the letter should clearly state this option.
This has been passed onto TMD managers to consider. |
| You said that the new Trade Marks Notification letter could be improved and you made a number
of improvement suggestions. |
We informed you that the notification letter was being reviewed and your feedback would
be looked at under that review. |
| You said you had problems filing an E-TM3; You tried 3 times and were concerned that you
might have to pay for 3 applications. You also said that you had spoken to IPO staff about this but
they did not call you back even though they promised that they would. |
We contacted you and apologised for not contacting you earlier. You were told that you would
only be charged for 1 application and that your comments would be passed onto staff who were reviewing
the E-TM3 process. |
| You said that you checked an OHIM mark on our website and informed
us that we were displaying an incorrect status for this mark. |
We explained that the information on our website relating to OHIM marks was never 100% accurate.
This was because although we receive the updates about OHIM marks, we only update this information once
a week. We gave you details for the OHIM website so that you could check the up to date status of the
mark. |
| You said that you had searched for a particular design and although it picked up all the
recent designs, your search results did not include any designs over 25 years old. |
We explained that when our website was set up in 1997 it was decided to just back capture
all the designs back to 1982. You were told that details about all other design registrations could
be obtained from Kew National Archives  . |
| 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. |
