UK IPO urged to better support international patent filings

Our Immediate Past President, Matt Dixon, was in Parliament this week to assist the House of Commons’ Business and Trade Committee’s inquiry into Financing the Real Economy.

Matt, Chair of our Public Affairs Committee, was joined on the witness panel by Dr Stephen Wells, of vaccine pioneers EnsiliTech, and Martin Brassell, of IP valuation experts Inngot. The session was chaired by Liam Byrne MP

Matt Western MP asked Stephen Wells about EnsiliTech’s recent experience of raising £4.5m in investment.  Stephen said that the experience had been generally positive and that their investors were nationwide, including London, South West and Scotland. He also commented that only dedicated science angel-type investors can assess deep tech on its merits.

John Cooper MP asked Matt what the UK could learn from other countries.  Matt said that the UK had dropped out of the top five of the WIPO Global Innovation Index for the first time in 12 years and that this was mainly down to our business infrastructure.  He mentioned that Switzerland and Sweden were ahead of the UK.  He went on to talk about the failure of UK patent applicants to internationalise their patent applications and the need for government support and education, as outlined in our report Innovation and Patents in the UK and Matt’s recently published article in the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee’s Science in Parliament magazine. He pointed out that the EPO provided better guidance than the UK’s Intellectual Property Office and that wthe UK was part of the European Patent Convention – but that the IPO seemed to view the European Patent Office as a competitor.  Stephen supported this view with his own experiences, emphasising that UK IPO does not do a good job of signposting applicants towards the Patent Cooperation Treaty (the international agreement that simplifies the process of filing for patent protection in multiple countries, administered by the World Intellectual Property Office) and that its guidance on international patenting, in general, was not great.

Martin answered a question from Charlie Maynard MP about the challenges around IP-backed lending. You can read an article about IP-backed lending here. The article quotes Martin, who is Co-Founder and CEO of Inngot and a member of CIPA’s IP Commercialisation Committee.

Matt answered a question from Justin Madders MP about what he would like to see from the upcoming budget, saying that this wasn’t about additional money but about information and co-ordination.  Martin added information regarding IP-backed lending.

Matt gave an interview to legal outlet MLex on the session. Read here.

Read more about EnsiliTech in this news article on our website.