| You had a general enquiry (call received at 10.48). You asked to speak to a manager of Patents, as you were very unhappy with the fact that the response time to respond to the first Patent examination had been reduced to 2 months and also 1 month. You said
we (IPO) are going down the same route as the EPO in regards of response time to examination which you felt was bad. |
You did not want to be contacted; you just wanted to express your feelings regarding the process. |
| You wished to complain that you have not been allocated a date for a hearing on your application. You suggested that you should now get a full refund. Our letter dated 4 March 2011 confirms the hearing request. |
We said, "That the demand for hearings had been high in recent months. We received 215 requests within recent months. Your papers have been reviewed and note that having acknowledged your hearing request on the 4 March 2011; a colleague tried to contact you on numerous occasions and left a message on your voicemail, but received no response. We also tried to contact you via email, but you were unable to confirm you
availability. You then contact us advising that you no longer required a hearing, but requested a full refund. Taking into account the circumstances, the process of
arranging your hearing was dealt with in a reasonable and timely manner. Therefore a refund will not be given. However you still have an opportunity pursue the hearing
route if you wish". |
| You said, "I made 2 phone calls, and 4 emails in order to resolve an error on my mark text of the Trade Mark. I emailed the relevant address and received an automatic reply and nothing was resolved, I have been trying to resolve this since 17 May 2011, I am a paying customer and I was hoping to receive a better service than this." |
We said, "That your TM was awaiting registration upon payment of your fee so no issue to resolve." |
| You told us, "Impossible to submit docs with page numbering system not working/ not clear... bet you get lots of queries on this one." |
We replied, "Thank you for your feedback on the Patents web filing service. Our test team has checked the page numbering software, but they have not found any faults, so I think the problem may have been in specifying contiguous page ranges for each part of your Patent specification which, I understand, consists of very few pages. At Step 10 of the web filing service we provide two options for attaching Patent specifications, one is for a single PDF file and the other for multiple PDF files. Selecting the single PDF file option is the one that requires the provision of page ranges. If you use the service again in the future, I suggest you consider selecting the other option (ie to file the constituent parts of your Patent specification as multiple PDF files) as this does not require you to input page ranges. Thank you again for taking the time to send us your comments. We are always pleased to receive feedback
as it helps us to understand the issues our customers face when using the service, so we can take them into account when planning improvements to the service." |
| You told us, "That you were unhappy with the comments made in previous correspondence from the office regarding your Trade Mark. You were also unhappy with the hearing officer’s decision regarding the opposition against your Trade Mark." |
We responded, "I am sorry that I have still not been able to reassure you that the comments made in my previous correspondence with you have not been negative or prejudicial to the outcome of your case. I believe that I have tried to address all of your concerns and explain that the Hearing Officer’s decision was based purely on the merits of the case. As I have previously explained to you, this case is now closed and I am not prepared to enter into any further correspondence with you in respect of this matter." |
| You to us, "Web form for online form 23 seems very unstable. It does not seem to accept valid email addresses consistently. It also seems not to pick up selections made on the request options page." |
You were contacted via telephone regarding this issue. His system caused the issues rather than our web set up. |
| You advised that there was insufficient information on a search report. |
We said, "We apologised that the standard of the search was below standards. There will be a reissue of a search report explaining in more detail the relevance of various citations. Such supplementary reports are sometimes issued where the examiner considers that the relevance of the citations would not be immediately apparent. We should stress that most cases do not include such reports. In addition whilst the substantive examiner will be guided by the search examiners assessment of the citations, he is not bound by it, and may take a different view after a more detailed consideration of the whole specification." |
| You said, "It came to my attention today that the UKIPO has failed to publish (at "Ipsum - Beta") a majority of the most significant documents that were expressly filed online earlier this year for each of the three National Phase Patent applications." |
We said, "When a PCT application has been published in the international phase, it is treated as published under the UK Patents Act when the UK national phase begins. This is set out in section 89B(2) of the UK Patents Act 1977. In these circumstances we publish a "front page" which includes details of the application, including the international publication number. This allows anyone interested in the application to find the full published international application. At the same time that the "front page" is published, most documents on file also become open to public inspection. To allow documents which are open to public inspection to be viewed more easily, we have launched "Ipsum" - our online Patent document and information service. However, the current service ("Ipsum - Beta") is an interim version which only includes certain documents. Unfortunately, some of the documents on your applications which should have been available through "Ipsum - Beta" were not available. I apologise for this fault, which was due to an administrative
error. This has now been rectified, such that all documents which are open to public inspection and within the scope of "Ipsum - Beta" should now be available." |
| You told us that you were unhappy with the way your new application had been handled and the advice you were given regarding this which caused you to file your application wrongly. |
We said, "You stated on the form TM3 that you were applying for a series of 2 marks, however only one mark was submitted and the New Applications Team contacted you. It was during your telephone conversation with a staff member that confusion arose regarding the terminology used. As you have stated, you were looking to protect the word and logo of your company name and we understood this as seeking protection for the ‘Word and Device’, which is the mark you originally submitted. However, after having looked at the email exchanges it is clear that the terminology used had been misunderstood as you believed that ‘Word and Device’ related to two marks, the ‘Word Mark’ and the ‘Word with the Device’. It is an unfortunate choice of wording which can lead to ambiguity as it could be construed as including more than one mark, it may be better suited to use the wording "word WITH device" given, as you say yourself, that those who have never had any previous experience in applying for a Trade Mark may not fully understand this wording and I will raise this issue with our website development team. Unfortunately you were unable to clarify your exact requirements and we processed your application from the information housed on the TM3. We now know
that it was two marks that you wished to apply for. As the requirements for this application have been misinterpreted by both parties we have undertaken an ‘informal’
examination regarding acceptability of both these marks under Section 41(2) of the Act. As explained, these marks would not be considered acceptable as a series." |
