Online Services a priority for 2009

Reflecting on 2008 it is clear that this year is going to present a number of challenges to our industry. Following a number of years of significant increases in application volumes it is likely 2009 will see these volumes reduce as the impacts of the financial market turmoil flow on to the wider economy.

Here at IPONZ we are starting to see the impact of this on applications volumes across Trade marks, Designs, Patents and PVR. From this month we will be publishing graphs related to application volumes on our website.

On the positive side this is allowing us to further reduce the turnaround times for the high volumes of applications that have been received over the last few years. We will be publishing details of processing timeframes on our website so clients can be kept informed of likely timeframes for their applications to be processed. We will also be introducing new online services in the coming months that will assist clients in tracking the progress of their applications.

During the last quarter of 2008 we have conducted a number of process reviews throughout the organisation in an attempt to identify opportunities to further reduce compliance costs for industry and improve turn around times. A number of these initiatives will be implemented over the next six months along with some significant enhancements to our online services.

2009 has already seen the introduction of our new online hearings decisions service and this will be followed in late February by our new Search and Preliminary Advice online service for Trade Marks.

A significant volume of correspondence received by the office relates to clients requesting copies of documents related to an application or the current status of that application. To help facilitate these requests we are developing a new online service called "View IP History Online". This new service will allow registered users to view information including documents, actions and key dates associated with a specific Trade mark, Design or Patent.

We believe this service will significantly reduce the turnaround time for clients in receiving requested information and free up resources within IPONZ to focus on application processing activities. Development is now underway and this service is expected to be available in early April 2009.

Work is also well underway with enhancements to our IT systems to provide functionality to allow clients to elect to receive correspondence via email from IPONZ. Development has been completed and testing is now underway. A number of clients will be contacted in late February to assist with the pilot phase of the project with a go live scheduled for mid April 2009.

Links

Application Volume Graphs

• Trade Marks
• Designs
• Patents