IPO patents service roadmap

We are sharing our roadmap of planned changes, improvements and enhancements over the coming months to the new patents service.

Our September update includes details of new updates, improvements and features we will be working on in the coming months.

An update on our plans to continuously improve the new patents service: June 2026 added.

On 1 April 2026 we launched our new patents service to the public. This is the September update for our service roadmap, which details our plans to improve the service over the next year.

You can see full details of the updates we’ve made on our patents service updates and improvements page. Some highlights include the following.

We’ve made assigning the user’s organisation as the representative much easier for GB and national phase patent applications. The service will now present the user’s organisation as the first option when assigning a representative for their patent, so no more laborious searching.

When applying for a patent, full addresses are now displayed when users search for applicants, inventors or representatives. Previously, some details (like the city or county) were missing.

We’ve made some improvements to the account creation and sign-up process, with more to come.

Users can now see and search for patent applicant and owner details in the Check the Patents Journal service.

On 10 September we made our first ‘zero downtime’ update which sets us on the path to reduced service disruption going forward. While there will be some service maintenance windows in the future, these will start to become increasingly rare as we automate more of our technical processes.

These are the highest priority improvements that we’re working on now. We expect these to be done in Autumn 2026.

providing users with a submission receipt immediately after their patent application has been submitted- further information is provided in our developer blog  

improvements to the ‘Check your answers’ page to include fee details and to prompt further checks