United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office

Intellectual Property Office

Type	Government agency
Region served	United Kingdom
Chief Executive	John Alty
Parent organisation	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Website	ipo.gov.uk

The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom (often The IPO) is, since 2 April 2007, the operating name of The Patent Office. It is the official government body responsible for intellectual property rights in the UK and is an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Some work on copyright policy is shared with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and plant breeders' rights are administered by the Plant Variety Rights Office, an agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The IPO also has direct administrative responsibility for examining and issuing or rejecting patents, and maintaining registers of intellectual property including patents, designs and trade marks in the UK. As in most countries, there is no statutory register of copyright such that there is no direct administration required in copyright matters by the IPO.

The Intellectual Property Office is led by the Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, who is also registrar of trade marks, registrar of designs and Chief Executive of the Office. Since 15 February 2010 the Comptroller has been John Alty, following the resignation of Ian Fletcher, who took over after the retirement of Ron Marchant on 30 March 2007. The previous comptroller was Alison Brimelow who was afterwards, between July 2007 and June 2010, President of the European Patent Office.

The existence of the Patent Office and the post of Comptroller are required by the Patents and Designs Act 1907 (though most of the remainder of this Act has been repealed), but the substantive duties of the Office are set out in other legislation, including:

All of the above legislation has been amended extensively since it was first passed.

The Patent Office was established by the Patents Law Amendment Act 1852 and opened on 1 October that year. Patents had been awarded prior to this date – indeed Britain has a continuous history of patent regulation dating back at least as far as the fifteenth century; however, by the mid-nineteenth century the process of application had become extremely complicated. This act consolidated patent scrutiny and awards into a single office serving the whole of the United Kingdom (where previously a petitioner had had to apply and pay fees to several offices, and to obtain separate patents for each of the UK's constituent nations).