Whatever happened to the Gowers Review?

It’s coming up to the first anniversary of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. After the initial flurry (well, that might be overstating it) of muted excitement and the change to the name of the Patent Office (sorry, UK-IPO), not much seemed to happen.

However, the UK-IPO has been busy making plans to be busy. A visit to the Office’s website reveals 10 issues identified for either formal or informal consultation during Autumn 2007 (including a possible private copying exception). However, the only consultation at the moment is on fast-track patent and trade mark registration. There’s just over a month left of Autumn, so the IPKat is blocking out all of December in his diary to read all the consultation documents. Many issues are pencilled in for completion by the end of 2008, though some of the measures, particularly concerning the IP institutions, are already taking place. Various pilots are also ongoing, or are scheduled to begin in the near future, including a pilot of community patent review.

You can see the plans in full here.