IP Australia


IP Australia is an agency of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. IP Australia administers intellectual property rights and legislation relating to patents, trade marks, registered designs and plant breeder's rights in Australia. The agency's precursor, the Australian Patent Office, was established in 1904 by the Commonwealth of Australia. Since 1998, IP Australia has been located in Discovery House in Canberra, Australia. In 2007 Discovery House was expanded to include a third wing allowing co-location of all personnel. The new west wing of Discovery House was officially opened on 31 October 2007 by the Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery AC CVO MC. In 2008-9 IP Australia opened a patent examination centre in Melbourne to accommodate 40 patent examiners.
IP Australia has been an International Searching Authority and International Preliminary Examining Authority for patent applications filed in accordance with the Patent Co-operation Treaty since 31 March 1980. Australia is also a member of the Madrid system for trade marks, the Paris Convention for designs and the UPOV for plant breeder's rights.

Statutory basis

The current legislation administered by IP Australia is:
s are generally scientists and engineers who do not necessarily hold law degrees but have received legal training in patent law. "A patent examiner is hired based on their technical expertise, their professional qualifications and possibly their industry experience. They then undergo training within the office, and we use competency based training. An examiner will take somewhere between 12 to possibly 18 months to become what is called an acceptance delegate. That means they are assessed to be competent to assess a patent application and make a decision about it qualifying or satisfying all of the legislative provisions." .
"If you have not attained the Commissioner of Patents Acceptance Delegation within two years of the date on which you commence duties, you may have failed to meet a condition of your engagement, failed to complete your entry-level training courses and you may lack an essential qualification for the performance of your duties. Consequently, it is likely that immediate action will be taken to terminate your employment."
"APO is pursuing a medium-term strategy of continuing to engage patent examiners so that we can reduce that backlog during a time when our work is a little bit quieter, so that when economic activity picks up again we will be well placed. That is adding to our costs for patent examiners, in particular where we have continued to recruit."
In order to be an ISA, APO must have "at least 100 full-time employees with sufficient technical qualifications to carry out searches."

Notable Australian patents

Questionable grants

APO been criticised for granting patents for impossible or absurd, already known, or arguably obvious inventions.
In 2001 APO introduced an Innovation Patent system in which immediate grant occurred for applications which pass a formalities test. Innovation patents are aimed at providing protection for short market life products. To demonstrate the absurdity of the system, an innovation patent application was filed for the wheel and granted by APO. For this grant, IP Australia was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2001.
"This article in the Sydney Morning Herald says that the application drew attention to:
… some of the more glaring inadequacies in Australian patent law, where any member of the public may lodge an innovation patent application online, pay a fee and have the application rubber stamped within a matter of a few weeks, no questions asked. It made people laugh but did nothing to reform Australian innovation patent law."