Performance Targets for the Intellectual Property Office

Our innovation strategy sets out our ambitions for an innovation-led economy. Now, more than ever, we must support innovators as the UK looks to embrace the science and innovation that is at the heart of our post-pandemic economic plan to build back better.

For a company and as a country, having your IP secure makes life more enjoyable, easier, safer, and prosperous, giving researchers, inventors, creators, businesses and organisations the confidence to invest their time, energy and money in doing something new.

This confidence is essential. It incentivises innovation which drives economic growth and improvements in society.

The UK is fortunate to start from an enviable position. We are already renowned for our leadership in research and our excellent scientific institutions that generate life-changing technological advances. We are home to many innovative businesses, from established global players to burgeoning start-ups. Our research and development (R&D) roadmap has committed to unprecedented levels of public investment (a 30% increase) in R&D. And our creative industries are known around the world for their excellence in fields as diverse as music, cinema, literature and computer games.

Innovation drives economic growth and creates jobs. However, too few businesses are aware of and able to access the tools they need to translate new ideas into new products and services and to challenge established businesses. We are committed to making the UK the best ecosystem in the world for starting and growing a business. That means having the best access to capital, skills and ideas, as well as a smart and stable regulatory framework.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) corporate priorities 2022-23 will, through its stewardship of the IP system, play a fundamental role in ensuring the UK becomes the most innovative and creative country in the world. The IPO is an ambitious, growing organisation that aims to be the best IP office in the world. The IPO team has a clear plan to deliver its corporate priorities and provide excellent services internally and externally, shaping our UK IP environment and making the IPO a first-class 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 2022-23 the IPO’s strategic targets are:

By the end of March 2023, the service design, business processes and technical requirements for all six transformation projects (manage, secure, challenge, registers, search and IP journals) will be fully defined and documented.

Achieve an average overall customer satisfaction of 85% or more.

Produce a strategic threat and harm intelligence assessment of intellectual property rights infringement (by November 2022).

To achieve efficiencies worth at least 3.5% of our core operating costs.

IPO will work with BEIS and other partner organisations to review its priorities regularly, ensuring they support wider Government aims and that its efforts and resources are focused where they will have the most significant impact driving UK innovation and a creative economy.

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