It was gratifying to see the UK Intellectual Property Office, in partnership with the UK government, this week launch a new digital system for patent renewals, but unfortunately it falls short of existing solutions in the market such as RenewalsDesk.
The launch is part of an effort to reform the customer experience of patent and trademark holders in the UK and part of a wider – and very welcome – scheme run by the UK government to bring its red-tape-ridden legacy services into the Internet age.
It’s now possible to pay a UK patent renewal fee online via this .gov.uk site. But although paperwork can now be filled out digitally, the system offers none of the other features patent renewers need, such as annual reminders of upcoming due dates and automatic payment options.. Users of this tool gain no peace of mind when it comes to renewals, simply the ability to file information online instead of via the post.
It is also of little use to those who hold international patents and wish to quickly renew their whole portfolio, or even just a single global patent family at once. Global IP holders are still forced to engage other services in order to renew patents in other regions, which can be time consuming and costly.
The service has been in its testing phase since August 2013 and so far more than 2,500 renewals have taken place through the system.
Lord Younger, Minister for Intellectual Property, said: “More than 400,000 patents are renewed every year and more than a quarter of paper submissions have errors.”
“A renewal request can be completed using the new service in under 4 minutes saving valuable time and money for both IP specialists and businesses.”
Though this may be true, those who handle multiple patents (especially patent attorneys) may be less than impressed by spending four minutes on each renewal.
To put it into perspective, a firm whose total client base is granted just 50 UK patents a year would need to spend an entire working week processing the renewals for these patents – and at the end of the week, only the UK patents would be renewed for a single year.
Not only would you then have to spend following weeks making renewals for all the other countries in which patent are held, but you would also have to repeat the whole process afresh every year as data is not saved for following years.
There also remain inherent risks in using a service that provides you with the means to make payments, but not the knowledge or the system of checks usually in place around patent renewals. While some errors may be avoided, there is no way the system can prevent you from renewing the wrong patent!
Click here to find out more about the RenewalsDesk online patent renewal service. Our tools offer automatic renewals and billing for patent renewals covering all of the major patent offices across the globe. Users can renew from a few patents to a few hundred quickly, easily and reliably, year on year.
July 15th 2014