Previous feedback
January to March 2008
| Compliments | Response and additional measures taken |
|---|---|
| "Thanks for the speed at which you conducted the search; I am very impressed with the service I received". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| Mr Justice Floyd thanked a member of staff for assisting him during a hearing in the High Court in December 2007. He considered it very helpful in understanding the technical issues of the Case. | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "I would like to say a huge thank you for your advice and the return call in connection with our application. I am truly grateful". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "This is just a brief note, on behalf of me and my colleague, to thank you for your help and hospitality on Friday". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you very much for your prompt reply and your valuable advice". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You went far beyond the call of duty to help me, with an unusual application. My submission was very much a one-off". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "What a fantastic presentation day at Woking. The children were thrilled and the whole school has a real buzz about it. Thank you very much for the prizes. You have provided great inspiration for so many young children". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you for organising and liaising everything for our wonderful day. The children and parents have come in today still buzzing with it all. It was a great end to our success in the Cracking Ideas competitions and a super event to be part of, we have been well looked after from start to end". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were really human, attentive, and eager to help, kind and highly professional and knowledgeable. IPO staff are friendly, calm and inspire confidence," | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were excellent and I was impressed and had a feeling of satisfaction dealing with the IPO". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you for being very helpful, polite and personable". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| The CEO's Office was complimented by Sir Kieth O'Nions for pulling together a briefing at such short notice for our minister. | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were professional, enthusiastic and reassuring and sent the information pack straightaway. Great service, very good and comprehensive information provided". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you for being so very polite, helpful and professional, and explaining things to me in a way that I could understand. I would like to thank the Intellectual Property Office for your service and kind words whenever I phone for your help with filling in forms etc. Keep up the good work". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were helpful, friendly and concise. Very grateful, thank you very much". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were very nice, top quality. The speed of phone response was fantastic". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were polite and knowledgeable and answered my questions in an understanding way. The Patent Office is one of those Government Departments that has retained its quality of service". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were extremely helpful, knowledgeable and informative. I received more information than I expected". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you for being so: friendly, knowledgeable and professional". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "Thank you so much for your help. I phoned up confused and left with a smile. You was friendly and helpful". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were very impressive, very polite and professional". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were knowledgeable, efficient and courteous". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "The quality of service I had was excellent and I am very satisfied". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were well educated and knew your job. I could not have asked for a better service". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "You were very efficient, professional and helpful". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| "As always the advisor was professional, helpful, polite, knowledgeable and amiable. In all the years that I have been registering, trademarks, the excellence, reliability and professionalism of your advisors has never altered it is a joy to do business with you". | No response/additional measures necessary |
| Formal Complaints | |
| You said that you were very unhappy with the new Notification System; | We gave a thorough explanation as to why the IPO had moved to this new system, clearly explaining that this decision was only taken following a consultation exercise with the IPO's customers. You were also given the contact number of the Deputy Head of International Trade Marks, in case you required any further clarification on the new system. |
| You said that you were unhappy that we had accepted a similar trade mark to yours. | We told you that in cases where there was conflict and the later mark was not yet registered then it was possible to oppose the later mark. Unfortunately the later mark had been registered and opposition was no longer an option. However, it was still possible to file invalidity proceedings. The contact details of the Head of Law Section were given in case you wanted invalidity advice. |
| You said you had a trade mark registration in class 41 and were suing a company for using this trade mark without your consent. | We sent a thorough reply explaining the Roles and Responsibilities of the Intellectual Property Office. You were told all about the examination process and what routes were available to you and you were also given the contact details of the Head of Law Section in case you had any further questions relating to opposition or invalidity proceedings. |
| You said that you were given incorrect advice by the Central Enquiry Unit (CEU) before applying for this trade mark. | We explained that all calls in the CEU are recorded and this is brought to the attention of all customers at the beginning of each CEU call. The call has been reviewed and it was handled in line with our normal procedures. |
| You said that we were wrong to accept a trade mark and that we should remove it from our register. | We said that the trade mark had gone through the examination process and was considered to be acceptable. The opposition process was there to allow people to lodge oppositions and none were lodged in this case. The invalidity procedure can also be used to remove a registered trade mark if you feel that the IPO was wrong to accept it. |
| You said that you had received some misleading information about notifications relating to prior rights holders. | We apologised for any advice that might have been given that was not as clear as it should have been. He then went on to give a full explanation of the notification system and how it related to prior rights holders. |
| Informal Complaints | |
| 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 apologized 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. |
| General Feedback | |
| You said that you were receiving unofficial invoices and you were not sure if they needed to be paid. | We gave you information about these companies and you were told that these invoices had nothing to do with your applications. Warning notices are still being sent out with journal letters informing you about these companies and there is also a warning notice on our website that relates to these unofficial registration companies. |
| You said that you felt that the wording in the trade marks examination fact sheet was misleading and should be changed. | We agreed and the wording is to be amended. |
| You said you wanted to know where you could find the information regarding filing priority documents after you had filed your application, as this information was not included on the guidance notes that accompanied the TM3. | We found the information in Chapter 3 and forwarded it onto you via email. This issue was reviewed by the Deputy Head of Trade Marks and he is considering whether to include this information in the next revision of the Trade Marks Guidance Notes. |
| You said that you wanted your personal details removed so that they were not searchable on Google or similar search engines. | We amended your personal details. Changes have also been made to our website so that applicant's addresses are no longer shown in the electronic TMD journal unless they want them to be. These changes will also be reflected in future revisions to the TM3 notes and the notes on our website. |
| You said that our website only allowed you to access 100 documents and you wanted to search over 800. You tried looking for Tribunal Practice Notices using the website search engine box. It brought back over 800 hits; however, the system would not allow you to view more than 100 hits. | We located the relevant Tribunal Notice and sent it to you. Tribunal Notices are listed in year order on our website. Work is presently being done to improve the search engine on the IPO website. |
| You said that on two occasions you were sent the wrong Designs Form. | We have asked staff to take more care in the future to try and ensure that this mistake does not happen again. |
| You said that all of our electronic acknowledgement invoices look the same when they arrive in your inbox. You suggested that we add something to help you to distinguish one e-mail from another, by including the applicant's reference number or application number. | We are reviewing this problem to see if a solution can be found. |
| You said you had difficulty finding ECJ cases on our website. | We found the relevant ECJ cases and sent them to you. We also sent you the ECJ website address so that you could book mark it. This problem navigating our website and finding things was passed onto our website developers to consider. |
| You said that it would be very helpful to have online access to the English translations of European patents granted in another language and validated in the UK. At present, these can only be obtained as paper copies by filing patent form 23. They cannot even be obtained electronically by email. | We told you that by filing a Patents Form 23, machine translations are freely available through Esp@cenet. We do offer an electronic Form 23 service but this only covers GB Cases at the moment not EP/UK's. However, with the ratification of the London Agreement, from the 1st May there will be no need to file a translation to confirm the granting of the EP/UK application in the UK. |
| You said that you did not know who to make the cheque payable to and that we should put this on the forms. | We informed you that nearly all of the fee bearing patent forms have payment details on them. And the fee sheet also clearly states 'Cheque, made payable to 'UK Intellectual Property Office' |
| You said you filed two patents at the same time and did not complete the reference box on the Patent Application Form (which is optional). So when you receive correspondence from us, you are not sure which patent it relates to. | When we write to you our letters clearly identify which patent is which because we use the title name, which needs to be completed on the form when an application is made. This is not the first time that this has happened and we are reviewing this issue to if any improvements can be made to try and avoid this happening again. |
| You said you had difficulty contacting the Human Resources Team by e-mail. You wanted to find out if you had been successful in a recent patent examiner recruitment exercise. | We contacted you and apologized for any difficulty you had contacting the recruitment team through the normal e-mail channels. You were told that your application had been received and was still being considered as part of the initial sift, which had been delayed. You were told that the results would be known in a few days. |
| You said it was difficult to find the IPO's Patent search engine on our website. You suggested that we looked at other websites such as: esp@cenet, The US Patent and Trade Mark Office or the German Office. | We passed your feedback onto the Internet Review Team to consider as part of their review. |
