The IPO has direct administrative responsibility for examining and issuing or rejecting patents, and maintaining registers of intellectual property including patents, designs and trade marks in the UK. As in most countries, there is no statutory register of copyright and the IPO does not conduct any direct administration in copyright matters. The IPO is led by the Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, who is also Registrar of Trade Marks, Registrar of Designs and Chief Executive of the IPO. Since 1 May 2017 the Comptroller has been Tim Moss, following the resignation of John Alty who had been Comptroller General since 2010. The Comptroller General before Alty was Ian Fletcher, who had taken over after the retirement of Ron Marchant on 30 March 2007. The previous Comptroller General was Alison Brimelow.
Substantive duties
The existence of the Patent Office and the post of Comptroller General are required by the Patents and Designs Act 1907, but the substantive duties of the IPO are set out in other legislation, including:
Each of these Acts of Parliament has been extensively amended since it was first passed.
History
The Patent Office was established by the Patents Law Amendment Act 1852 and opened on 1 October that year. Patents had been awarded prior to this date – indeed Britain has a continuous history of patent regulation dating back at least as far as the fifteenth century; however, by the mid-nineteenth century the process of application had become extremely complicated. This Act consolidated patent scrutiny and awards into a single office serving the whole of the United Kingdom. Initially, people applying for a patent often used to submit a detailed model of their submission; these were retained and the collection became known as the Patent Museum. Despite having been established solely for the administration of patent law, in time the Patent Office took on other responsibilities, including registered designs in 1875 and registered trade marks in 1876. More recently, having also acquired responsibility for copyright regulation, the Patent Office has become known as the Intellectual Property Office. On 1 October 2008, the position of the Company Names Adjudicator was introduced under the Companies Act 2006. The Company Names Adjudicator's powers are enforced through the Company Names Tribunal which forms part of the Intellectual Property Office.
Location
From its early days, the Patent Office was based in the Chancery Lane area of London, where it eventually spread to fill the area between Furnival Street and Southampton Buildings. The principal entrance was at 25 Southampton Buildings, where a purpose-built headquarters was constructed in 1899–1902. The principal interior space was the Library, a "harsh but spectacular space 140ft long, lit from skylights and a clerestory, with two tiers of steel-framed, fireproofed galleries on cast iron Corinthian columns". Designed to allow members of the public to consult patent records, it also contained a very extensive collection of technical and scientific publications, which in 1967 was transferred to the British Library. In 1991, having outgrown its original premises, the Patent Office moved to Newport, South East Wales, where the IPO headquarters remains to this day. A small branch office in London has been maintained for the benefit of the large professional community based there and for communication with central government.
