| You said you were given incorrect advice by IPO staff, about applying for your trade mark. |
We sent a substantive reply to your complaint. The Team Leader also informed you that you
still had the option of trying to overcome the objections raised against your mark, as long as this
was done within the agreed timescale. |
| You said you had problems filing your applications on-line. |
We checked our systems and we did not find any faults. You then filed the applications on
a different PC and this time the applications were accepted. |
| You said you were surprised to hear the Central Enquiry Unit message first in Welsh, then
English. You felt that as we were a UK Office that the message should be in English first then Welsh. |
We told you that we are currently reviewing the message and your comments will be taken
into consideration. |
| You said you were unhappy with the way we had processed your Patent Search and Advisory
case. |
We told you that there were problems with your case and that we should have contacted you
earlier about these problems. This approach is well document in our procedures and simply hasn't been
adhered to in this case. |
| You said you had not received an accelerated Patent search report from us. |
We apologised and said that we had not seen your request for an accelerated search report,
when we were dealing with your correspondence. Staff have been asked to look out for additional information
in covering letters to try and ensure that we do not make the same mistake again. |
| You said that you had requested the withdrawal of an application and we had not taken any
action on your request. |
We are investigating this issue to see what went wrong and whether any action needs to be
taken, to ensure this does not happen again. |
| You said you followed the classification guidance on our website and were unhappy when we
raised classification queries on your application. |
We checked the information currently on the website and we were satisfied that the wording
was clear. Although we did think it might be a good idea to review this area of the website when the
website review was done. |
| You said you could not find any facility for searching applications on our website. |
We sent you an e-mail inviting you to contact the office for advice on how to search for
trademarks. |
| You said that you continually asked the Search and advisory (SAS) Team to e-mail the SAS
report to you as soon as it was ready. They never did, instead they just send you a paper version of
the report by post and also an electronic version at about the same time. |
We sent a thorough reply covering all of the issues raised. The SAS Manager also asked our
IT Team if it was possible to send out the reports earlier. Following a few changes to the IT System,
SAS reports are now sent out electronically as soon as they are completed. |
| You said that you were unhappy with recent changes to the TM search services, which meant
that you no longer had access to information on lapsed, abandoned or revoked trademarks. |
We informed you that this was a recent change but one which we have reconsidered and have
decided to make this service available again to customers. |
| You said that the wording in the examination letter suggested that the only way to overcome
any series objections was to request a hearing. |
We informed you that you could argue via correspondence or just call the examiner on the
phone to discuss the objection. The wording is also being reviewed by Trade Marks Managers to see if
the covering letter needs to be revised. |
| You said that you sent in an application with the correct fees and we abandoned your application. |
We explained that the fees had not been paid correctly. We did write to you with suggestions
on how to re-file your application but as we did not receive a reply within 2 months of our last letter,
the application was correctly abandoned in line with our normal procedures. |
