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UKIPO United Kingdom (GB) — national
Layer national
Jurisdiction GB (WIPO ST.3: GB)
Issuing body UK Intellectual Property Office (an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade)
Rights administered patent, trademark, registered_design
Working languages English
Connector status skipped for live registers (no public API as of 2026-05-16); UKIPO MoPP shipped (substantive law)
Last verified 2026-05-16
Manifest entry coverage/sources.yaml GB/UKIPO/MoPP (statutes/manual only — patent_client_agents.ukipo_mopp)

Detail surveys:

Higher layers covering this office transitively:

  • EPO INPADOC (via regional/epo.md) — GB patent biblio + family (GB granted via EP designation OR via direct national filing)
  • WIPO Madrid — international TMs designating GB (UK is a Madrid member); national-only GB TMs are NOT in Madrid
  • WIPO Hague — international designs designating GB; national-only designs NOT in Hague

Rating: 🔴 Red — No API

IPSUM retired Jan 2025; One IPO replacement HTML-only; no API timeline Jump to access details → View on the atlas →

§1 Mission

UKIPO is the UK national IP office, separate from the EPO (UK is not in the unitary patent system but UK granted patents are common via EP designation pre-Brexit and increasingly via direct national filings post-Brexit). UKIPO is currently in the middle of a multi-year platform modernization called "One IPO Transformation" — the old IPSUM Atom feed was retired and the replacement REST APIs have not been published with a release timeline.

For agents working on UK IP, EPO INPADOC substitutes for patent biblio + family. National-only GB TMs and registered designs are gaps with no proxyable substitute under our zero-infra constraint until the One IPO APIs ship.

§2 What's unique here

  • National-only GB trademarks — not designated in Madrid IRs
  • National-only GB registered designs — not designated in Hague IRs
  • UK Patent Office decisions (Comptroller, Hearing Officer rulings)
  • UK file wrappers (post-Brexit direct national filings)
  • UK IPEC / Patents Court rulings — case law layer (covered via find_case_law if licensed)
  • UK Manual of Patent Practice (MoPP) — substantive-law layer (already shipped)

§3 Programmatic surfaces

IPSUM Atom feed — retired 2025-01-22

Historically the closest UKIPO had to a patent API. Atom-format status feed. Retired without a direct replacement.

Field Value
Status Retired 2025-01-22
Verdict 🔴 Red (no longer operational)
Primary source gov.uk announcement (per the wave research)

One IPO Patents Service — launched 2026-03-31 without an API

The modernized successor surface. Public launch was 2026-03-31, but launched without a public search API. UKIPO has explicitly stated "exact timeline for releasing APIs is still to be confirmed."

Field Value
Status HTML public UI live; no public API
Verdict 🔴 Red (no API surface)
Primary source waves/2026-05-16-registered-ip-discovery/ukipo-uk.md

One IPO Trade Marks Service — just entering design phase 2026-27

Per the wave research, the trade marks track of the One IPO programme is just entering design phase in 2026-27. The current TM surface is HTML-only at trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext plus weekly bulk XML on data.gov.uk.

Field Value
Status HTML search + weekly bulk XML
Verdict 🔴 Red — no live API; bulk is Shape-E catalog-only

One IPO Designs Service — queued behind trade marks

Designs phase comes after trade marks in the One IPO transformation sequence. HTML lookup only at registered-design.service.gov.uk/find.

Field Value
Status HTML lookup only
Verdict 🔴 Red

Weekly bulk XML on data.gov.uk

For trade marks: data.gov.uk weekly TMJ XML. Shape-E catalog-only; doesn't meet our zero-infra constraint.

Field Value
Endpoint data.gov.uk
Auth none
Format XML weekly
ToS Open Government Licence v3.0
Verdict 🔴 Red for proxy (bulk-shaped); could be Shape-E catalog connector if user demand justifies it

§4 Fees

UKIPO publishes patent, trade mark, and design fee schedules (GBP). Since Brexit, UK-only filings sit outside EUIPO and the Unitary Patent.

§5 Access via patent-client-agents

What we cover today

What we should NOT add (and why)

  • Live UKIPO register scraping — no stable surface; One IPO is replacing UI/UX iteratively. Any scraper built today gets obsoleted as the transformation rolls out.
  • IPSUM scraper — retired; nothing to scrape.
  • TM/design HTML scraping — same brittle pattern; bulk XML is a cleaner fallback but doesn't fit zero-infra.

What we should add when available

  • One IPO Patents Service API — when announced and published. Worth a discovery pass within 30 days of announcement.
  • One IPO Trade Marks Service API — same; later in the rollout (2026-27 design phase + however long to ship).
  • UK case law via Find Case Law — Patents Court / IPEC / Court of Appeal / UKSC. See connectors/ukipo.md and BACKLOG row 18. Gated on the free R&D computational-use licence.

Next steps

  1. Quarterly recheck of gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office for One IPO API announcements.
  2. Watch list: BACKLOG.md quarterly watch list — already includes UKIPO One IPO.
  3. Substantive law expansion: UK statutes (Patents Act 1977, Trade Marks Act 1994, Registered Designs Act 1949, CDPA 1988, Trade Secrets Regs 2018) via legislation.gov.uk CLML/AKN is a viable next step (BACKLOG Tier 2 Rank 10). Would round out UK substantive-law coverage with point-in-time queries (a feature USC fetchers can't match).

§6 Known unknowns

  • One IPO API release date — explicitly TBD per primary source. Recheck quarterly.
  • Find Case Law licensing — does the free R&D computational-use licence permit our cache-and-serve model via MCP?
  • Designs phase timeline — sequence is TMs → designs, but TMs hasn't shipped APIs yet; designs is 2+ years out at minimum.

§7 References

Primary sources only.

Service surfaces:

Bulk:

Legal basis:

Fees:

Detail survey + wave:

Last updated 2026-05-16.