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UK-IPO to outsource to India

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

The IPKat has just learned that, as part of the cost-saving measures announced by the UK government in the recent budget, as from next year the UK-IPO will begin outsourcing its work to the Intellectual Property Office in India.  At first, all telephone enquiries will be automatically routed to a new call centres in Mumbai for patent matters and Kolkata for designs and trade marks.  In further stages of the program, patent searches and examination will also be carried out by Indian examiners.  

IP minister David Lammy said "this is a great opportunity for further cost savings for UK businesses wishing to seek protection for their valuable intellectual property.  We have already made substantial progress is allowing businesses to save money by reducing fees for electronic filing, and this is natural progression for making further savings".

Head of the IP India, Shri P.H. Kurian said "this is a great opportunity for Intellectual Property India.  We are very well placed to take on the additional load of managing the UK's intellectual property requirements. Our highly trained staff are fully able to handle the new challenge of dealing with the many innovations that come from our friends in the UK.  We are even training a selection of our staff to speak Welsh, as we understand how important this is as an official language of patents in the UK".

The IPKat looks forward to seeing how well IP India manages to handle the workload of the UK-IPO.  He commiserates with those staff in Newport who will inevitably suffer, and thinks that this is an unfortunate but inevitable result of the upcoming belt-tightening we will all have to do in the future.

Full post as published by IPKat on April 01, 2010 (boomark / email).