Regulating the IP professions: need for more transparency and trust?

The IPKat has picked up scent of a story that IPReg (the UK's Intellectual Property Regulation Board, set up by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys -- CIPA -- and the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys to undertake the regulation of their respective professions) is meeting on this very day in order to discuss a proposal to increase the fee for regulating practitioners by a handsome and inflation-busting 40 per cent. Cats don't have nests and are not usually sensitive to nest-building operations by regulatory bodies, but a little bird has suggested that this may be the case here and has commented to the IPKat as follows:

"It was expected that IPReg's eye-watering ”startup” costs might reduce after the first year. However, IPReg now wants to employ another person full-time to get the required proportions as between lay and professional members. They also want to set up IT infrastructure to duplicate what is freely available".

The suggestion is also made that the meeting has been timed for today so that CIPA, the senior body within the IP professions in the UK, will have only one council meeting before IPREG's budget has to be approved, so it will be bounced into approving the budget on the basis that there isn't time to query it.

The IPKat does not know whether this is true and hopes that it is not, but feels that this is not the sole issue. He senses that there is a degree of unease or distrust, and some fear, of IPReg within the IP professions; he also feels that all of this can be cured by transparency on IPReg's part, backed by strong and effective public relations. He doesn't know if anyone has any figures, but he wonders whether IP professionals have more complaints about IPReg than the general public has about them.

Merpel is curious to know which countries outside the UK have regulatory bodies for the IP professions that operate in similar ways, and what the experiences of those countries might be.

IPReg's position on fees, and table of current fees, here.