Key Points
- Responsible for administering Australia’s intellectual property (IP) rights system, specifically trade marks, inventions (patents), designs and plant breeder’s rights
- A prescribed agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 (FMA Act) and recovers more than 95 per cent of its costs by charging fees for its IP rights services
- Operates independently of the Department on financial matters and with some degree of autonomy on other matters
- Estimated revenue (mainly from fees paid by applicants for registration) of $141.4 million for the 2009-10 financial year
- Role is to provide a robust intellectual property (IP) system, to enable Australians to benefit from their creativity and to enable Australia to access foreign technologies.
Facts And Figures
IP Australia’s role in support of innovation consists of:
- creating a safe and secure environment in which to make the intellectual investment necessary to innovate and thereby encourages research and development
- promoting the disclosure of discoveries and follow-on generation of ideas
- enabling firms to build brand value and business reputation which in turn contributes to improved consumer confidence
- providing a legal framework in which to trade ideas
IP Australia also promotes awareness of intellectual property, provides advice to government on the development of IP policy and contributes to bilateral and multilateral negotiations and development cooperation programs to support the global IP system for the benefit of the Australian economy and society.
IP rights are affected by a number of international treaties. Many of our patent applications in particular come from overseas companies seeking to protect their innovation in Australia. By offering rigorous IP protection, IP Australia facilitates access by Australians to overseas technology.
IP Australia’s key challenges
- To maintain and improve quality standards and quality assurance systems to achieve robust IP rights. IP Australia has finalised a review of the IP system and has put forward several proposals which seek to provide Australian business and consumers with a stronger and more efficient IP rights system. These reforms aim to: reduce barriers in the innovation landscape for researchers and inventors; improve certainty about the validity of granted patents; and allow patent claims to be resolved faster. IP Australia has also reviewed its Patents and Trade Marks product quality standards and has developed a more robust and transparent process for validating the quality of work produced by examiners.
- To address a backlog in patent applications (which is common to most national IP offices) by recruiting more examiners and helping them to work more efficiently. Recent initiatives in this space include:
- an intensive recruitment effort which represented a more than 20 per cent increase in the patent examination cohort;
- a new salary structure which offers additional rewards for high-performing patent examiners;
- more flexible employment conditions including locating groups of patent examiners in other cities;
- focusing on maintaining and improving the skills of our workforce including providing support to staff to update their technical expertise; and
- looking at making significant efficiencies in examiner time by exploiting the work being done on related patents by examiners in other countries.
- To continue to refine the work processes and technology solutions that underpin the agency's core products and services to provide more efficient service delivery.
- To modernise IP Australia’s customer management channels and service requests and standardise customer processing across IP rights.
- To improve access to IP information through AusPat, an online search facility that provides a single point of access to all Australian electronic patent information.
- To engage more effectively with our stakeholders to ensure that our products and sevices are, and continue to be, useful and relevant. Recent initiatives include: the development of a more tailored and attractive web presence for the organisation that provides an effective platform for delivery of online services; more assistance to business to better navigate the complexities of the international IP environment and the increased range of options available; and the establishment of two new forums which seek to engage with a broad cross-section of the IP profession and the business community.
- To facilitate the strategic use of IP across the Australian community. IP Australia will continue to develop practical IP training and education courses such as its recently launched VET program and will partner with business advisory organisations to enable greater market penetration and mainstreaming of the IP message.
Key statistics
In 2009-10, IP Australia received 25,353 patent applications, 105,352 trade mark applications, 5,128 design applications and 354 plant breeder’s rights applications.
IP Australia’s head office is located in Discovery House, Woden. Staffing numbers are about 1,050 ASL.