The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has issued the following information:
The UKIPO CEO has announced that from Tuesday 24th March 2020 and all subsequent days until further notice have been declared as “Interrupted days”.
This now means that deadlines for trade marks, patents, designs and supplementary protection certificates since 24th March will be extended until the UKIPO announce the end of the interrupted days.
In regards to examinations and hearing reports, the UKIPO have also announced that the current two month time period to respond to new examination reports has been amended to four months.
The UKIPO is unfortunately unable to extend the reply period for design examinations.
The majority of accepted trade marks will be published for purposes of opposition. There may be delays for some because of the need to notify owners of any UK and international earlier marks identified in the search report, which currently is only done by post.
The UKIPO have also announced that they have closed their buildings and all staff are now working from home, this means paper forms, faxes and paper correspondence are unable to be processed.
Alternatively there is a new email service which can be used instead of faxing or posting documents, this email is paperformcontingency@ipo.gov.uk
Click here to read the full statement from the UKIPO
Article Published March 27th, 2020
