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IP Inclusive has responded to IPReg’s July 2024 consultation on its 2025/26 business plan, budget and practising fees. Here you can download a copy of our response.
EDI key, especially to education and training
We were pleased to see that equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) continue to play a key part in IPReg’s proposed 2025/26 plans, in particular through its education-, training- and qualification-related activities. IPReg intends to continue with projects begun under its 2024/25 business plan, many of which are likely to improve diversity and inclusivity in, and access to, the patent and trade mark professions and thus to have a positive impact on the regulated community. We applaud this work, for the reasons set out in our response to IPReg’s 2023 business plan and budget consultation.
The 2025 budget
We were also pleased to see the inclusion, in the proposed 2025 budget, of an increased allowance of ÂŁ12,500 for supporting diversity initiatives in the regulated community, underpinned by a continuing ÂŁ20,000 diversity initiatives reserve.
IPReg has proposed to increase its practising fees by 3%. In this context, our response stressed the importance of the discretionary waiver and its availability in any case of hardship. We believe this represents a proportionate way of ensuring the fee increase does not compromise inclusivity in the regulated professions.
Diversity data gathering
IPReg plans to continue to work with, and contribute to, cross-sector work on EDI, and in particular mentions working towards a collective approach to gathering data. IP Inclusive has been collaborating with CIPA, CITMA, The IP Federation and IPReg to develop a toolkit to support patent and trade mark professionals in their EDI data gathering efforts and align approaches and benchmarking across the sector; we appreciate IPReg’s support for, and contributions to, this project, which we hope will continue.
“Continuing to build our evidence base about the IP sector” also remains one of the anticipated main areas of work in IPReg’s proposed 2025/26 business plan. In this regard, we were delighted that IPReg ran a fresh diversity survey earlier this year. For the reasons given in our 2023 consultation response, we believe it was important for this work to be conducted as early as possible. We look forward to seeing the results.
For the longer term, we have repeated our recommendation that diversity data gathering be incorporated into IPReg’s annual registration procedures. We remain of the view that for the patent and trade mark professions, it is the regulator that is best placed to gather this data and to provide accurate diversity benchmarks for its registrants, their businesses, their clients and other legal sector regulators. IPReg itself also needs up-to-date evidence in order to evaluate the impact of its EDI-related regulatory arrangements and target future EDI initiatives more effectively.
IPReg’s equality impact assessment (EIA) for its proposed 2025 increase in practising fees is based on diversity data gathered in 2021 and is largely unchanged compared to the 2023 version. Our 2023 comments therefore largely still stand. We are, however, hopeful that next year’s EIA will be informed by more up-to-date evidence from the 2024 survey.
A collaborative relationship
IPReg (the Intellectual Property Regulation Board) regulates patent and trade mark attorneys registered in the UK. As such its activities impact on a significant section of the UK IP professions. It has provided support for IP Inclusive and works with us to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in its regulated community.
As in our responses to previous IPReg business plan consultations, IP Inclusive pledged this year to continue to work with IPReg to progress its diversity- and access-related initiatives. We very much value the financial and other support that IPReg provides for our work, and the opportunities it offers for consultation and collaboration.