UK IPO litigation manual refreshed

If you are likely to be embroiled in proceedings before the UK's Intellectual Property Office, you might want to take note of the fact that its Litigation Manual has been updated. This manual provides guidance on the administrative procedure for patent and design right proceedings before the IPO: it includes detailed desk instructions on the practices and procedures for formal examination and processing of statements and evidence filed in inter partes proceedings before the Comptroller and in the formal processing of ex parte proceedings.

The IPO updates the manual regularly. Helpfully, it marks changes by placing a line in the margin of the text. It also provides a schedule of the latest changes in the Introduction.

IPO's Litigation Manual gets a spring-clean

The Intellectual Property Office in the United Kingdom has recently refreshed its Litigation Manual ("guidance on the administrative procedure for patent and design right proceedings"). The manual is provided for the assistance of the IPO's own staff when, as inevitably happens, they get sucked into patent and design right proceedings. A schedule of changes can be found on the second page of the Manual's Introduction, which helpfully reminds readers that its contents do not have binding force.

The Litigation Manual does not constitute rocket science for the typical UK patent litigator, but it has five things to commend it:

* It is free;
* It is easily accessed;
* It is written in unusually clear terms, since its readers do not consist exclusively of practising patent litigators;
* It contains a number of reference to decisions of Hearing Officers which, though not binding as precedents, may contain useful content and which are not generally reported in the official law reports;
* It enables anyone who is involved in litigation against the IPO to know what is driving the other side.