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New Oxford IP Professor; IPO fees reduction on the cards?

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

New Oxford IP professor

Oxford University has officially announced the appointment of Graeme Dinwoodie as Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Oxford University. He will take up his appointment in June.

The IPKat wishes Graeme the best of luck in his new position.

Full press release here.

Fees consultation

The Intellectual Property Office (which the IPKat wouldn't dare call the Patent Office, or even the UK-IPO) has launched a consultation on fees and services.

The aims are to ensure that the registration of national trade marks is a viable option, to ensure that businesses continue to protect their IP during the economic downturn and to encourage e-business.

Amongst the proposals are an early assistance scheme for trade mark applications, a 50% fee reduction for e- filing of trade marks and a lesser reduction for patents, the abolition of series registrations for trade marks, the scrapping of the fast track trade mark registration procedure (because the normal procedure is just as fast) and the reduction of trade mark tribunal fees.

Responses are due by 1 June.

The IPKat notes that most of the proposals are aimed at trade marks. This could be because of the need to compete with OHIM, but perhaps businesses are more willing to put less money into protecting their trade marks than their patents when the going gets tough.

Full post as published by IPKat on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).