IPONZ Leading the Way

Franke Hyland is pleased to hear about the recent developments in the way the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) will be communicating with patent, trade mark and design applicants, and their agents.

IPONZ is in the midst of implementing (for trade mark and design applications) a full 'B2B' communication system for all official correspondence. This means NO MORE PAPER. This is a bit unusual for the IP world, and as far as national IP offices go, we think IPONZ are the first to be fully electronic.

The new system went live for trade marks and designs on 13 February 2012 and is expected to extend to patents in mid-2012. More information is available from the IPONZ website at:
http://www.iponz.govt.nz/cms/iponz/latest-news/expired-items/iponz-new-case-management-system.

The system IPONZ is implementing travels beyond the optional use of email or fax to receive documents; this is a system where all communication from IPONZ will be via direct download from their database, and communications to IPONZ will be by upload to their database.

Each application will have its own 'page' on the IPONZ website (www.iponz.govt.nz) where all transactions can be effected – reading examination reports, uploading responses to examination reports, submitting assignments to the recorded, changing the applicant’s or agent’s details etc. Specifically, IPONZ will not be issuing paper of any kind to applicants – even registration certificates will be 'download only'. No more stamps, ribbons or other traditional finery.

An area where problems may arise for IPONZ, at least for the medium term, will be in the issue of certified copies to other national IP offices to support Paris Convention applications made in those offices. Nevertheless, their policy is that they will provide these electronically. If this is in some way unacceptable to a National Office, IPONZ will deal with them directly.

This is a bold, but welcome, move by IPONZ. As a relatively smaller office, they are well placed to try to bring the business of national IP offices into the 21st century. This obviously accords very well with Franke Hyland's approach to communication with clients and IP offices, and we are looking forward to working with IPONZ's new system and seeing it develop.


by Adam Hyland