IPEX-2015 in Chennai

Last month, I spoke at the 6th edition of the IPEX-2015 conference in Chennai from 25-26 September. This meeting, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, brought together thought leaders from the government, industry, and academia. Through my talk, I shared the UK’s best practices in intellectual property (IP) prosecution and enforcement. 

On prosecution, I highlighted the different routes available to applicants to accelerate the processing of patent applications with the UK intellectual property office. For instance, the Green Channel, introduced in 2009, allows for expedited processing of environmentally-friendly inventions. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (UK) fast track is another option if the claims in the patent application have been previously accepted either in an international preliminary examination report or written opinion of an international searching authority. The Global Patent Prosecution Highway, launched in 2014, is a consortium of select country patent offices from around the world; these offices have formally agreed to cooperate in accelerated patent application processing.  Through this highway, applicants whose patent claims have been accepted by one participating office may request acceleration of one or more co-pending applications at any or all of the other participating offices.

I then shared a few of the UK’s enforcement practices. Firstly, I talked about the efficient coordination amongst the various offices of the government such as the Crown Prosecution Service, Trading Standards, and National Crime Agency, and non-governmental organisations such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft, and PRS for Music. The result of this coordinated approach was evident in the annual IP crime report (2014-15), which was recently released. Finally, I touched upon two important organisations in the realm of enforcement – Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC). While PIPCU focuses on offences committed online, IPEC offers both cost effective and time saving resolutions to disputes involving small and medium sized enterprises as well as private individuals.

At the end of the day, as I was leaving the conference venue, I ruminated about the influence that a robust IP system would wield on patent prosecution strategies of applicants and enforcement practices. Any thoughts?