GovWire

Following discussions with stakeholders, we propose to stop notifying inventors (who are not also applicants) when they are mentioned in patent applications.

There is no proposed change to the ways that the we communicate with inventors who are also applicants.

There are a number of reasons why we are considering this change:

• we are no longer legally obliged to notify inventors of their inclusion in a patent application
• the majority of inventors are already aware of their inclusion in an application. Many are employed by the applicant, or have assigned or agreed to assign, their right to be granted a patent
• we have evidence that a number of inventors have been confused by our existing notifications, incorrectly assuming they have to respond in some way
• we currently only notify inventors in applications which do not claim priority from an earlier application. This results in different processing depending on the type of application and we would like to standardise our approach in this area

If you wish to comment on this upcoming change please e-mail your thoughts to patentform7@ipo.gov.uk by 30 June 2016.

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