January 2025 has seen the UKIPO launch its new patent searching tool. This is available via the UK Government website, and is called One IPO Search.
For a bit of background information on this new service, back in 2021 the UKIPO announced its planned 5-year transformation programme. This programme, called the One IPO Transformation, saw the UKIPO embark on one of its biggest projects since it officially opened on 1 October 1852, and certainly its largest modernisation of UK intellectual property digital services in this generation.
As part of this programme, the UKIPO has been seeking to transform their online services across Patents, Trademarks and Designs into one system. Some of the aims of this new digital service are to enable customers to manage their IP rights in one-place, to be able to quickly and easily research IP with powerful analytical tools, and to provide a more effective and efficient service to its customers.
As the world becomes more digital, and other patent offices around the world, such as the EPO, WIPO, and USPTO, continue to innovate their online service platforms, the UKIPO is making big changes to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of the global IP scene, to help drive economic growth in the UK, enable and encourage UK innovation, and be one of the world’s leading intellectual property offices.
Although this new searching platform was set to launch in 2024, there have been slight delays, as with many big changes in the IP world. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day! So, January 2025 has seen the launch of the UKIPO’s new online patent searching tool. The UKIPO’s new online trademark and design services are scheduled to follow the new patent-based services later in 2025 and in 2026.
This tool replaces the previous Ipsum platform used by the UKIPO and is certainly proving to be a more advanced and tailorable searching tool. The One IPO Search tool allows users to search by the IP right type of Patent or Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC). Then, for patent searching, various options for searching are available, such as by application or publication number, Applicant/owner, Inventor, the Representative, keywords in the title and/or abstract, the classification, the status, and the date range for various milestones, e.g. the filing date, publication date, grant date etc.
Once relevant cases have been found, these can be sorted by relevance, newest filing date and oldest filing date. We have found cases dating back to a filing date of 1978 to be generated in this searching tool, although, of course, the more recent cases have more detailed and full data and documents available.
From my own initial testing of this new platform, it seems to be a quick and functional searching tool. The documents available for the prosecution history of a UK case seem to be sensibly named, shown in logical chronological order, and enable the user to quickly and accurately analyse the documents and information of interest.
Searching is regularly performed in the patent world for purposes such as validity, infringement, and freedom-to-operate. Whilst several other searching platforms – such as Espacenet, Google Patents, Patentscope etc. – provide good search functionality for matters including UK patents, the new One IPO Search certainly provides some great additional features for searching UK-based IP rights in the future.
If you would like to find out more about the UKIPO’s new One IPO Search tool, or how we can help you with your patent searching needs, please do not hesitate to get in touch with an Attorney at Boult Wade Tennant LLP.
