New digital patents services have launched

On 1 April 2026 we launched our new patents service. Since then, we have been making improvements to the new service and working towards retiring the legacy services.

We previously announced that we intend to retire our legacy patents services this autumn. Our original plan was to decommission Web Filing and [email protected] services together. We have listened carefully to customer feedback and worked closely with the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) to understand how we can minimises the impact on our customers. Accordingly, we will now be doing this in a more phased approach.

1. We will not be retiring  the Web Filing service on 8 November 2026. This  will remain open for the time being. We will confirm a precise retirement date for Web Filing soon but we expect this to be early in December.

2. The [email protected] email address will continue to be available after Web Filing is retired.

3. We will be providing a contingency document upload service in the next few weeks that can be used as a back-up if you are unable to use the new patents service. We will make this available before the Web Filing service is decommissioned. We will share more information on this soon.

4. We are rolling out a new ‘submission receipt’ feature for the new patents service that is expected to be available from Thursday 29 October 2026. It will allow you to access a receipt of your application details immediately after you submit it. This will mean you no longer have to wait for a security check to see the full details of what you submitted. This will be in place before Web Filing is retired.

From 9 November 2026, we will be asking customers to renew their patents from their IP account, instead of the current GOV.UK site. There will be no change to how you renew trade marks and registered designs.

We are moving the renewals service onto a new platform that is more modern to ensure a high-quality service going forward   and bring our patents services together in one place.