Fast Track Trade Mark Service To Launch In UK In April

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

16 January 2008

Lord Triesman, UK Intellectual Property and Quality Minister on Monday announced a new fast track service for trade mark applications.

The new service will be launched in April 2008 and will cost users an additional GBP300.

Lord Triesman explained that:

"The UK must be a world leader in innovation and enterprise. So it needs new services empowering business to protect their intellectual property. These services must be fast but thorough and effective. Today we announce just such a service for Trade Marks."

Ian Fletcher, Chief Executive of the UK Intellectual Property Office added:

"This will help us turn around trade mark applications more quickly while still providing our customers with a very high quality service. We also want to look at other ways of speeding up the process for registering trade marks."

Prior to the introduction of the new service, a Consultation for the Fast track processing of Trade Marks was launched on 21 September, 2007, and closed on 14 December, 2007.

In addition, Andrew Gowers undertook a review of Intellectual Property in 2005 and reported his findings to the Government in December 2006, identifying a number of areas in which improvements could be made.

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