Intellectual Property Office: Performance Targets 2021-22

Monday 24th May 2021 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)]

Unleashing innovation and creativity will be at the heart of the post-pandemic recovery and support British businesses to build back better. The Government’s Research and Development Roadmap sets clear objectives for increasing investment in research and becoming world-class at securing economic and social benefits; inspiring creators, entrepreneurs and start-ups; increasing the flow of capital into firms that are committed to research and development; attracting and retaining talented, diverse teams; making long term commitments to people, places and institutions and collaborating nationally and internationally to deliver world-leading innovation and creativity that achieves world-beating results.

Last year, communities and economies across the world faced unprecedented disruption due to the covid-19 pandemic. At a time of such devastation, we saw the best in British ingenuity. From our leading research institutions to schools and colleges, and from distilleries to Formula One teams, British innovators developed and manufactured life-saving sanitisers, vaccinations and ventilators. These technologies now offer a route out of the current pandemic. By enabling collaboration and incentivising investment, IP will play an important part in beating covid-19 once and for all. We are already reaping the benefits of the IP framework through its impact in mobilising research and development of game-changing vaccines at record speed. Funding by the UK Government has been vital in the rapid development, approval and deployment of vaccines and licensing of IP will be critical in reaching global communities. We can also credit this success to the decades of investment in science and innovation and sharing of knowledge underpinned by the IP system.

The Intellectual Property Office’s ambition is to be the best IP office in the world, by providing excellent IP services, a legislative and policy framework that is world leading and a brilliant place to work. It is transforming its ways of working, its services and the way it engages customers. Thanks to the resilience, creative thinking and team-work of its staff, the IPO stayed open for business throughout the pandemic and switched to digital delivery for many services. Now it needs to build on that to help businesses recover and grow.

This year, it expects intellectual property rights applications to increase by around 25%. To respond to this demand it will grow the work force, and importantly build its culture to match its bold ambitions. It will invest in its service delivery to ensure it can uphold excellent customer satisfaction for the long term.

IP underpins economic growth by incentivising investment, safe-guarding assets and enabling the sharing of know-how in technologies like life sciences and artificial intelligence. IP will help enable Britain to forge an unbeatable competitive advantage, accelerate the transition to net zero energy, beat the pandemic, and drive up innovation and creativity to build back better.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) Corporate Plan 2021-22 explains how through its stewardship of the IP system, the IPO will help the UK to become the most innovative and creative country in the world as an independent nation. It will do this through delivering excellent IP services, creating a world leading IP environment and attracting and retaining the best people by making the IPO a brilliant place to work.

As an Executive Agency and Trading Fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the IPO has set targets which are agreed by Ministers and laid before Parliament. I am glad that today I can inform the House that for 2020-21 the IPO’s targets are:

Customer: Average overall customer satisfaction with the IPO of 85% or more in Q4 2021-22.

Future proofing the IP Framework: Consult on changes to patent and copyright law to meet the future challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, and present recommendations to ministers by Q4.

Efficiency: Delivering our services efficiently through continuously improving our systems, processes and way of working to make things better for our customers and our people. Our target is to achieve efficiencies worth at least 3.5% of our core operating costs.

The plan includes actions to help businesses recover and grow after the covid-19 pandemic. The IPO’s priorities reflect this and it will review them as the consequences of efforts to control the virus become clearer. It has the ability to adapt its finance and resource models according to emerging trends and will do so through robust quarterly reforecasting. It will also work with BEIS and its other partner organisations to review its priorities regularly, ensuring that it supports wider Government responses to the economic impact of the virus and seek to focus its efforts and resources where they will have the most significant impact driving the UK innovation and creative economy.

[HCWS45]