Faster Patents?
The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has launched a public consultation into introducing a new process for fast-tracking the grant of UK patents. This was one of the recommendations made by the Gowers Review last year. The proposal is that in return for an additional fee, applications would be speeded up so that grants should take place within a year. As well as debating the introduction of another layer of expense, the consultation invites views on how popular such a service would be (and, by implication, whether the current infrastructure and resource could cope), and whether the current minimum 3 month period between publication of an application and grant of a patent (to allow time for third party observations) should also be reduced. Click here to read the IPO's press release on the subject.
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